The Victorian Railways plan for electrification of the Melbourne suburban rail network began in 1914, with the first electrically-operated trains running in 1918.

They were not suitable for the heavier electric motor equipment, but it was realised that they could be fairly easily fitted with a new car body to become country passenger vehicles.

W. M. Shannon, the then CME of the Victorian Railways, supervised a new carriage design utilising the older underframes and other components as deemed possible.

The new coaches were distinctive in having arched roofs in lieu of the then-standard clerestory style, as had been used since the first bogie passenger carriages on the Victorian Railways' system.

The standard design involved a centre aisle cutting through nine compartments, similar to the Tait style then being used for new suburban carriages.

Only three doors per side were installed, reflecting the priority of comfort over reduced dwell times on the country network.

All PL cars were fitted with both a lavatory and washroom adjacent to the longitudinal seating sections of the end compartments; these were each 2'10½" x 3'4½", one either side of the corridor with separate doors.

When first released to service, the PL cars were painted a deep maroon/crimson livery with "FIRST" or "SECOND" as appropriate adjacent to each door, as well as markings for the "SMOKING" and "LADIES" on the sides of the end compartments in a slightly smaller font; classes were also marked on the carriage doors.

A majority of carriages retained their Pintsch gas lighting, screw couplings and buffers until the late 1950s.

These were replaced around the same time as fitting of diaphragms took place; this latter project involved cutting out the middles of walls at either ends of the carriages and fitting a standard inter-carriage walkway/diaphragm unit to the end in its place, with a door which could be locked by railway staff.

The Ian Wright report[3] chose to identify these as Groups A, B and C, whereas the Victorian Railways mainly noted the carriages' lengths over couplers in the Working Time Table addendas and rarely elsewhere.

This proved a success, and so all except 27APL were recoded to second class BPL, and new carriages 1APL-26APL and 28APL-54APL were built with swing doors.

In the mid 1960s it was decided that first-class travellers deserved a better level of service than what was being provided by the APL fleet, so those cars were downgraded to second class.

In 1928 APL 20 (hinged-door, 58'0¼" over body) was converted to a railmotor trailer, coded 25MT, with buffers and hook-couplings removed and replaced with automatic couplers.

In the 1950s the van was reallocated to Warrnambool, for use on the local mixed trains running to Dennington and for employees at the Nestle's plant there.

In 1932/33 additional second-class capacity was required, and so fifteen randomly selected APL (swing-door) carriages were reclassed to BPL, taking numbers 28, 47 and 88-100BPL.

During World War II, carriage 82BPL (sliding door, previously 26APL #1) was withdrawn from service for conversion to a hospital carriage.It had its seats removed and replaced with thirteen triple-bunk beds for a capacity of 39 patients.

Originally, the troop trains ran primarily to Albury, Tocumwal, Serviceton and Bairnsdale.

[3] After World War II concluded, it is possible that in 1947 the Hospital Train may have returned to passenger service for a few years.

The carriages were repainted externally into green with gold and paired with locomotive N 430, painted in a similar livery.

Locomotive N 432 at the Newport Railway Museum has been repainted into the Jubilee livery for many years, even though that engine never wore the green and gold scheme in service.

The Jubilee train was fitted internally with a series of displays of state produce and examples of achievements, and was run across most lines in both suburban and country areas to allow locals in 66 towns[6] to explore and learn.

BPL cars 112, 92, 115, 114, 121, 113, 34, 111, 88, 62, 2, 108, 80, 41, 52, 45, 97 and 123 were converted to BCPL no's 15-32 at a rate of about three per year (more in 1971, fewer in 1972 and 1973), mostly released to service in numerical order.

A single compartment at the Smoking end was walled off from the rest of the carriage and had its seats removed.

That end compartment had the standard guards' equipment put in place, with a desk and a small area for vangoods storage.

Both fitted doors were smooth-panelled and split at half-height allowing the guard to lean out of the train to observe signals and display flags as necessary.

From November 1966, a further twelve APL carriages, not yet relettered to BPL, entered the workshops for conversion to BCPL.

14BCPL, numerically the last of this batch, entered service on 1 August 1967, though 8BCPL was delayed until 1 September 1967 for unknown reasons.

Also worth note is that these vans do not appear to have frosted windows on the left side at the guard's end, indicating that some of the passenger facilities may have been removed, if they had in fact been present in the earlier BCPL builds.

As a result, patronage began to fall, and combined with motor car travel, the need for local train services fell very quickly.