Side Door

A side door on one of the heritage carriages at the Eveleigh Paint Shop is open, showing the timber threshold and the brass kick-plate on the inside face of the door. The door itself is a single-leaf sliding type, the standard arrangement on most twentieth-century NSW suburban stock. The handles are polished brass on the outside, painted steel on the inside. The threshold is hardwood, scuffed and worn down at the centre where commuters' feet stepped across it for decades. A push-button release mechanism is fitted at standing height inside the doorway. The carriage body around the door carries the chocolate-and-cream NSW Government Railways paint scheme, with the door painted to match.

Side-door arrangements on Sydney's suburban fleet varied through the twentieth century. Earlier stock had hinged doors that swung outward; the later all-steel and converted carriages used the sliding-door pattern in this photograph, which let passengers board and alight more quickly at the busiest stations. The push-button mechanism was standard on the converted electric fleet from the 1920s onwards. The carriage in this photograph is part of the Historic Electric Traction heritage collection at the Eveleigh Paint Shop, retired from active service and held for restoration and display. The brass on the handles has been polished as part of that work.