New South Wales stainless steel carriage stock
These carriages were mainly used on interstate trains such as the Southern Aurora, which ran between Sydney and Melbourne, its slower counterpart the Spirit of Progress and the Brisbane Limited.
In late 1954, tenders were called for by the Department of Railways for 24 air conditioned carbon steel bodied cars for the Brisbane Limited similar in construction the HUB and RUB sets.
These cars were built from stainless steel and used design techniques that Commonwealth Engineering had licensed from the Budd Company.
Some of these cars were withdrawn following the cessation of the North Coast sleepers in February 1990 and the balance when the Sydney/Melbourne Express ceased in November 1993.
[14] Queensland Rail purchased six and moved them to Townsville with the aim of refurbishing for use on The Inlander, but the project was cancelled.
[17] NAM 2337 was purchased by V/Line in 2016 from a private buyer, and the preparations were made to convert it to a power van to be used on the North East Line.
In July 2018, the V/Line Board kindly agreed to donate the carriage to the Southern Aurora commemoration project located at Violet Town.
[18] In August 2017, Simon Mitchell & Danielle Smith of NSWGR Holdings Pty Ltd purchased 7 carriages at auction from the liquidator of the former ARHS (ACT).
LANs 2348, 2372, MHN 2366 & NAM 2335 were subsequently moved to Goulburn Locomotive Roundhouse where restoration commenced in September 2019, concluding in March 2020.
NAM 2367 was the subject of a Regional Job Creation Grant, with restoration commencing in November 2021, and completed by August 2022.
[7] They were then stored until August 1994, at which point the final XPT deliveries rendered the Aurora fleet obsolete and they were dispersed among various collections.
Numbered 2358 through 2360 and entering service in 1962, they used more or less the standard dining car interior with a kitchen at one end and two rows of six four-seater tables either side of a central aisle, for 48 diners at any time.
[7] The standard Aurora consist carried up to 200 passengers, so they could nearly all be served across four sittings; additional food facilities were provided in the BCS lounge car for the balance.
The berths were set up while passengers were in the dining room for dinner, and restored to seating format following breakfast each day.
The ten FAM cars built for the Brisbane Limited and Gold Coast Motorail were based on a more modern design, as applied for the Indian Pacific fleet from 1970.
[7] The cars were almost identical to the NAM sleepers, with compartments attached to a side corridor and a small conductor's cabin at one end.
The main difference was that the DAM cars' centre two compartments were merged, with the internal wall removed and the whole space allocated to only two sleeping passengers, rather than four.
This luxury compartment provided a wider bed at one end, with two armchairs and a full WC and shower, and was placed in the centre of the carriage for maximum comfort.
Three MHN vans were built for the Southern Aurora,[7] to provide 24 tons of luggage capacity for the train as well as a guard compartment.
The three were identified as MHN 2364 to 2366, and were jointly owned by the Victorian and New South Wales railways but allocated to NSW for maintenance purposes, and fitted with 2CA bogies.
