A very battered old van (DE1343) at Woodman's point. It had served as a DE class explosives van since 1957.

This group consisted of a motley collection of former D vans converted to carry explosives. By rights they should have been in the O class group with the other explosives vans. Conversions/reclassifications started in 1954. The oldest were those on the NZR type underframe. This included three vans which had run as D vans all their lives and also another three rebuilt from horseboxes in the second world war. There were a further three vans which were nominally re-bodied examples of this type but see further down. Details are colour coded in the table below

1954	1183 from D (N.Z.R. type)
1957	1343 from D (N.Z.R. type) 5130 from D (converted A)
1959	5117, 5126 from D (converted A)
1961	580 from D (N.Z.R. type) 1343 written off
1968	5117 written off
1970	580, 5126, 5130 written off
1971	1183 written off

The WAGR outline diagram for the class depicts one of the NZR type vans and is shown below.

Three of the 15' D vans built on a GB style wooden underframe were converted to DE in the 1950s. They were disposed of as follows in the table below.
1954	16, 61 from D(15'-0")
1957	45 from D(15'-0") 16 written off
1962	45 written off
1970	61 written off ( to Woodman's point)

There were two standard 16' D vans converted to DE and two other vans (nominally rebuilds of a 14' MRCWCo van and GSR type van) but in all likelihood 16 footers.

A rather battered late survivor at Woodman's point at least 10 years after it was written off. All of the 1953 vans had a distinctive steel fillet immediately behind the buffer beam not found on the earlier D vans.

In 1953 40 old D vans were "re-bodied". These appear to have been completely new 16' vans but I can't be sure. Some were converted to DE from 1964 and they are listed below colour coded by the type that they notionally came from thus: rebuilt from 15' NZR type vans rebuilt from 15' GB frame vans rebuilt from 16' vans

Former MRWA BLA class van D40506 became a DE in 1973 followed by nearly all of the remaining vans in this group (40501, 40505, 40507-40512) in 1974. They were all written off together in 1983 but some could still be seen in traffic as late as 1985.