It takes a lot of commitment to keep our heritage tourist trains gracing our rails, with services like 3801 Limited’s Cockatoo Run linking the City of Sydney with Wollongong and the Southern Highlands several times each month, making a significant contribution to NSW tourism in so doing. After 30 years of operations, its fortunate that the Eveleigh Projects team have developed the know how to keep the show safely on the road – notwithstanding the surprises that come part and parcel of a running vintage fleet! Our volunteers are currently mid way through an intensive battery box rebuilding program on each carriage of the running fleet to ensure the continued safe and reliable operation of heritage carriages on the rail network.
This work involves stripping the battery box down to the last nut and bolt, and discarding any life expired timber or other components before completely rebuilding the unit. The box illustrated has just been fitted to first class compartment car XBS2158, which is currently in the process of being reactivated at Eveleigh (after many years of storage off-site) for a return to tourist train service.
Eveleigh is home to a unique team of skilled car builders who form a repository of invaluable knowledge and expertise that is becoming increasingly rare in this day and age. Our volunteers share skills with 3801 Limited, The Heritage Locomotive Company and Lachlan Valley Railway to keep the carriages under the care of each in good maintenance.
With a fresh set of well maintained batteries snug inside the new battery box, we shouldn’t have to look at this again for many years and after many more thousands of kilometres of tourist train travels.
Stay tuned for more maintenance updates!