Suburban Car Workshop Facing East

The Suburban Car Workshop at Eveleigh Paint Shop is a long industrial hall with a distinctive sawtooth roof. In this photograph, looking east, the roof's profile dominates the upper third of the frame: a row of pitched glass panels alternating with shorter pitched solid panels, repeating the length of the hall. Each glass panel faces north to admit even daylight. The tracks below run the length of the hall, currently empty of carriages. Steel trusses span between the timber columns that support the roof. The floor is concrete, swept clean. The hall is large enough to hold half a dozen carriages, end to end.

The sawtooth roof was a late-nineteenth-century industrial standard for any workshop that needed even daylight on its work surfaces. At Eveleigh, the geometry was set so that the glass panels faced north, away from direct sun, which gave a flat, shadowless light that suited paint work. The 1888 cast-iron sash windows are mostly the originals. They have been re-glazed several times but the frames are unchanged. The Suburban Car Workshop has been continuously in use since the building opened, currently as part of the working heritage rail facility. The light it gives in this photograph is the same light the original carriages were painted under.