Workshop

The volunteer workshop at the Eveleigh Paint Shop is a separate fitted-out area at one end of the building, where the Historic Electric Traction crew works on the smaller-scale restoration tasks: lamps, hardware, fittings, brasswork, lettering. The workshop is laid out with workbenches along the walls, hand tools racked overhead, a couple of pedestal grinders and a small lathe in the centre, and a fume cabinet against one of the walls for spray work. Lighting comes from overhead fluorescent fittings supplemented by individual task lamps at each bench. The floor is concrete, swept clean. Boxes of parts are stacked along one of the walls, labelled by carriage number and project.

The Eveleigh Paint Shop's working life ended in 1989 with the closure of the Suburban Car Workshops, the 1912 iron-clad extension that handled the suburban carriage finishing work. The building has since been the base for Historic Electric Traction, the volunteer group that maintains the railway's suburban and interurban carriage collection. The workshop area in this photograph is the part of the building that operates daily under the volunteer program. Carriages move into and out of the larger workshop bays for the bigger jobs; small parts and fittings get the bench attention. The crew works to the standards of the original Paint Shop tradesmen on stock that is, in some cases, more than a hundred years old.