Following World War I patronage on the Victorian Railways increased significantly, and there were insufficient high capacity carriages for the busiest routes.

To overcome the problem, the W design was adjusted, with a longer and wider body, to produce the Long W series.

Although diagrams are not available, photos appear to indicate that the long version of the ABW design, with the curved roof, was set out internally in much the same way as the shorter carriages.

62BW appeared in the season one episode "The Copy" of Round the Twist, and were used for filming of scenes between Healesville and Yarra Glen.

Aside from the three Pullman cars, these were the heaviest items (by axle load) of rollingstock to run in Victoria, possibly until modern times.

The cars quickly became known as Iron Tanks by most rail workers, or nicknamed "Hell" by crew members who had to work in the kitchen section with its huge wooden fuel stove, which was not airconditioned.

The bogies were completely replaced in 1973 with a then-modern fabricated design, reclaimed from Spirit of Progress carriages and modified to support the tremendous weight of Avoca which tended to sway about on rough track.

It was then sold to the Commonwealth railways, reclassed as DB75, fitted with airconditioning and converted to standard gauge, entering service in November of that year.

On 19 February 1952 it had been repainted into the Commonwealth Railways colour scheme and by December 1954 new bogies of the BK type were fitted.

They used a similar internal arrangement to the last two E type sleepers, Buchan and Wando, but were wider with steel panels used in lieu of timber slats for the sides, and a curved roof matching the Long W carriages.

The cars were initially painted in standard VR dark red, and rostered for use on the Melbourne to Mildura overnight trains.

[18] Like Buchan and Wando the lounge area was replaced with a tenth sleeping compartment, which was slightly larger than the others.

To avoid confusion, in 1939 they were renumbered Sleeping Cars No.1, 2 and 3 in build order (with Buchan and Wando becoming 4 and 5 respectively) in lieu of names.

Around the same time they were fitted with air conditioning systems powered by axle-mounted generators, and repainted into blue and gold.

Unlike the earlier cars, Werribee, Indi and Ovens were fitted with second-class bench seats in lieu of first class, so they had capacity for 40 sitting passengers in day form.

VFW 7 is at Junee Roundhouse Museum The W type carriages were slowly phased out of service from 1981 as part of the 'New Deal' reforms of passenger rail operations, with a number going into preservation.

Being a mainstay on the Victorian Railways network for so long, the W-series has a large number of representatives still in service today.

However, when the time for preservation rolled around the longer, wider cars were preferred due to their higher seating capacity and as a result, most of these are higher-numbered.

As of 2013, Steamrail's business plan recorded 64AW, 63ABW, 60BW, 61BW, 63BW, 67BW and 68BW as serviceable; carriages 65BW (underframe only), 66BW, 70BW, 71BW (ex 60AW) and 80BW (ex 61ABW) were marked as stored; 80BW has since been transferred to Maldon.