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01 Eveleigh Paint ShopEveleigh2016
ISO 1001.6sf/8.021mm
Series · 49 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
Eveleigh Paint Shop is the carriage paint shop of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops, on the north side of the main line at Redfern in Sydney. Built in 1886 and 1887, it painted, lettered and trimmed the carriages of the New South Wales Government Railways, and stayed in railway use until the Carriage Works closed in 1989. The brick wing is about 130 metres long, eight bays and six roads under a sawtooth roof on cast iron columns, and steam pipes were laid under the floor to dry the paint.
Painting of the railways' engines and carriages had been done in the open air, in dust and poor light, and the Eveleigh Paint Shop brought the work under a roof. Tenders for its ironwork, roof covering and skylights closed on 15 June 1886, and in July 1887 the Sydney Morning Herald found it still under construction, the roof arranged so the sun would not shine on carriages being painted. About 1890 steam pipes were laid below the floor along the pits to help the paint dry.
A steel-framed extension on the north side, the first full steel-framed building at Eveleigh, was in hand by 1912 and still being extended in 1914; its spray painting booth ran on rails along the carriages. On the night of 3 June 1953 a fire burned out a carriage and part of the Eveleigh Paint Shop.
By the 1970s work was concentrated on overhauls and painting. In 1986 the extension of the Eveleigh Paint Shop became the Suburban Car Workshops, overhauling the remaining electric red rattlers. The Carriage Works closed in 1989, and in 1990 all railway operations at the Locomotive and Carriage Workshops ceased.
The Eveleigh Railway Workshops were placed on the NSW State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999, the Eveleigh Paint Shop graded of exceptional significance in the state's heritage inventory. The building later held heritage rolling stock for the Office of Rail Heritage. When the Paint Shop Sub-Precinct was rezoned in 2023, development above the building was removed from the scheme, its fabric and structure retained in their current form.
NSW State Heritage Register listing 01140, Eveleigh Carriageworks CMP Volume II (2002), Sydney Morning Herald (14 July 1887) and State Heritage Inventory record 4801102
Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.
NSW State Heritage Register · Listing 01140 (1999) · Statement of Significance
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
The Sydney Morning Herald's 1902 tour found the Eveleigh Paint Shop standing apart from the main buildings, its paint store and mixing room fitted with mills and a mixer driven by a small engine. Compressed air worked a patent spray for painting wagons: work that cost £2 by hand cost 1s 8d by spray, though not for fine work. In one room women upholsterers under forewoman Miss Adair prepared the cloth and leather for carriage trimmings.
In 1905 a car built and ready in its essentials for the road was run into the Eveleigh Paint Shop, where steam pipes kept the temperature at 65 to 70 degrees day and night. Panels for the best cars were, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote, highly artistic and distinctively Australian, with the waratah and other native flora in the designs. The painters, the paper said, give a car the last touch.
On 2 August 1917, the morning the card system took effect, about 600 car builders and painters assembled at the entrance to the works instead of going to their places. In the strike that followed the Eveleigh Paint Shop was used to house the men kept on at the works: 800 in the early days, and by 5 September fewer than 150 sleeping on the premises, with the meals provided cut from 2,000 to about 200 a day.