Forecourt

The forecourt at Eveleigh Paint Shop is the open paved area inside the main entrance, where carriages stood between maintenance shifts. In the photograph, two carriages from very different eras share the space. The Centurion, an 1913-built timber and metal carriage, sits on one side; an Interurban motor car from a later electric fleet sits beside it. The forecourt floor is checker-pattern brick, the original 1888 paving still in place. The roof above is the workshop's sawtooth profile, cast-iron windows along the upper edge of each tooth letting in north light. The two carriages between them carry about a hundred and twenty years of NSW rolling stock history.

The Eveleigh Paint Shop opened in 1888 as part of the New South Wales Government Railways' main carriage repair complex at Eveleigh. The Paint Shop was where carriages came for repaint and detail work after running repairs were done elsewhere. Steam-heated floor pipes warmed the workshop in winter, and the cast-iron-framed sawtooth windows let in even daylight for paint matching. The forecourt has stood for over a century. The carriages parked in it have changed across that time, but the workshop has not been substantially rebuilt. The 2016 photograph shows the same paving, the same roof, the same orientation as the original 1888 building.