Power Car

A power car at the Eveleigh Paint Shop sits at one end of its set, the driver's cab visible at the leading end and the heavy electrical equipment compartment behind. The body is steel, painted in a heritage NSW Government Railways scheme. Twin headlights are mounted at the front, with a marker light and a horn cluster below. The cab windscreen is flat, the wipers in their parked position. Cab-end couplings sit at standard buffer height. Behind the cab, access panels in the side of the body cover the traction motor controllers, the air compressors, and the resistor banks that handle starting and braking currents. The roof carries the pantograph in its lowered position.

Power cars carried the traction equipment of an electric multiple-unit train; the rest of the set typically consisted of trailer carriages without independent drive. The arrangement was the standard for NSW suburban and interurban electric services from the late 1920s through to the 1990s. Power cars at the Eveleigh Paint Shop include both suburban and interurban examples, held by the Historic Electric Traction restoration group across the workshop's holdings. The power car in this photograph is retired from active service. The traction equipment behind the access panels is intact; the pantograph has been parked and the high-voltage circuits isolated.