Three Pullman carriages - two sleeping and one dining car - were purchased by the Victorian and South Australian Railways in 1928, for use on The Overland in conjunction with the E type carriages.
History In 1927 the South Australian Railways' Commissioner Webb organised the purchase of three carriages from the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Company of America. There was one dining car, with a landed cost of including of import fees, and two sleeping cars, for a cost of each. Webb had intended for these cars to be used as pattern vehicles for an extensive locally-built fleet, which required one dining and one sleeping carriage. At the same time and as part of the same order, the Victorian Railways was induced to purchase Macedon. However, the locally-built carriages never eventuated. Paperwork from the time notes that the cars were purchased from overseas "to meet urgent demands for increased sleeping car accommodation." It is not known whether the South Australian Railways ever received the full collection of engineering tracings for the Pullman cars; by 27 March 1929 only about three-quarters of the documents had been delivered, and both Railways held off on making their final payments until April 1929, despite a steadily increasing interest bill. This caused the Victorian Railways' expense to increase to , and presumably the South Australian portion increased at a similar rate.
The two sleeping cars were Lot 6111, Plan 7143, with 10 compartments and a side corridor each; the first such cars that the company had built since 1914, making an unusual order. The dining car was Lot 6112, Plan 7144.
In both cases the layout and fittings were to the latest standards of the time.
The cars were constructed with steel and had a concrete floor to lower the centre of gravity and improve stability, giving a total weight of spread across six axles.
Each car was individually railed from the Pullman Company's factory in Chicago to New York on standard gauge bogies, accompanied by their broad gauge bogies loaded on flat wagons, then sailed over to Australia as deck cargo. Mount Lofty and Adelaide left New York on 14 March 1928 aboard the Port Nicholson, arriving on 30 April 1928, followed by Macedon departing on 4 April 1928 and arriving at Port Adelaide in mid-May 1928. Both ships had travelled via the Panama Canal. Along for the journey was the Pullman Company's Assistant Mechanical Superintendent of the Chicago plant, whose role was to demonstrate the features and maintenance requirements of the new cars to local Railways' staff.
Macedon cost , Mount Lofty , and Adelaide had a cost at landing of . The difference in cost was due to shipping charges, and the cost of the two sleeping cars was split equally between the Victorian and South Australian railways, at each; therefore the cost to the South Australian Railways, including Adelaide, was . The contract was managed by the SAR, who collected Victoria's portion of the cost upfront.
The sleeping cars, Macedon and Mount Lofty, ran the whole length The Overland from Melbourne to Adelaide and return, and were jointly owned by both the Victorian and South Australian railways. The Dining car was named Adelaide and only ran on the South Australian portion of The Overland, being attached and detached to alternate trains mid-trip, while the Victorian side's dining requirements were handled by Victoria's dining cars such as Avoca and Hopkins.
Adelaide and Mount Lofty were both owned fully by the South Australian Railways, while the Victorian Railways owned Macedon. Both would eventually proceed to the Australian National-operated Tea and Sugar Train, remaining in service until 1997.
Sleeping cars
The two sleeping cars were each fitted with twin-berth cabins, individually equipped with washrooms, wall bracket lamps, wardrobes, hot and cold water, a fan, chair, steam heating and a shoe locker that was accessible from the corridor. To account for the excessive weight of the carriages, passengers were charged an additional for overnight accommodation. Each compartment had two windows, matched to a single window on the corridor side. The bogies were of a double-bolster equalising type with disc wheels, contemporary to American designs at the time; though the disc wheels may have been a first for Australia. Stewien says the cars arrived in Adelaide with both automatic couplers and buffers, but that the couplers were temporarily swapped out for screw couplers pending conversion of the rest of the fleet; Banger (2007) mentions photos of Mount Lofty at the Chicago plant with the screw couplers already fitted.
The Pullman company had standard designs for its sleeping cars, and at the time of construction most sleeping cars were at least partially open-plan rather than compartments for cheaper construction costs. The construction of Macedon and Mount Lofty was unusual in having ten complete compartments.
On delivery from Pullman the cars were fitted with steps down to ground level and pipes for steam heating from adjacent vehicles, but this equipment was removed before they entered service. It has been hypothesised that the cars were only piped for "through" steam heating, but a photo taken at the Pullman works on 7 February 1928 apparently did show a steam exhaust grill in a compartment, below the central window pillar. The steps, at least, were absent when the cars were lifted from the Port Nicholson at Port Adelaide, but were either refitted or replaced at a later date.
The cars were used on alternate services (one each way) between Melbourne and Adelaide, but their excessive weight of over per passenger meant an operating cost more than 60% higher than older E type sleeping cars. The cars proved popular in service and were often booked out nearly two weeks in advance of each trip. Both factors were partially managed by increasing the charge for Pullman berths on 1 February 1929 by , on top of the charged for a sleeping berth and the regular ticket price. Any berths still available on departure from Serviceton towards Melbourne could be allocated to Victorian passengers from , , , , or for a fee of ; a similar arrangement existed for westbound services, where the charge for stations from to Adelaide was . From the same date, and in line with international practice, two people aged 14 or over could share the same berth by mutual agreement with for an additional fare of ; children under that age did not have to pay when sharing.
The two sleeping cars were used from introduction until the Great Depression, then stored from 1 September 1930 to 14 October 1935. As with Adelaide, it is hypothesised that the excessive weight of the cars meant that their removal would allow twice as many, higher capacity, timber-bodied sitting cars to be attached to the train and thus remove the need for a second division of the express service.
When the cars re-entered service they were then repainted hawthorn green to match The Overland stock, but Banger (2007) notes that each car represented 15% of the tonnage the new Overland service while carrying only 5% of the passenger accommodation. The Overland was restored to seven weekly trips each waty from 4 July 1936. It is not known whether the cars were, until that point, still painted in the standard Pennsylvania Railroad red livery. New carpets and upholstery were ordered from Pullman in mid-1937, despatched on 22 October that year, and probably fitted to the cars in 1938. The order was for of of upholstery fabric.
Both cars were fitted with automatic couplers 1936.
From 1 April 1940, wartime conditions required that both cars be withdrawn from service due to their excessive weight to capacity ratio; luxuries like comfort had to be disposed of and capacity maximised. Mount Lofty was stored at Islington Railway Workshops, and Macedon may have been stored at North Melbourne Workshops, though the latter is not clear and Stewien (2011) implies but does not state that it, too, was stored at Islington. Both cars remained in storage through and after the war.
Macedon Macedon departed New York on 4 April 1928, and entered service on The Overland on 10 June the same year. After final withdrawal as a sleeping car in 1940 it was kept in storage, until it was sold to the Commonwealth Railways on 27 May 1950 for , at the same time as Victorian Railways' dining car Hopkins.
On 21 July 1950 it entered service as ARC74, painted the standard Commonwealth Railways' chocolate and cream, and running with its original six-wheel bogies converted to standard gauge. It was used to maintain capacity while releasing timber sleeping carriages for fitting of air conditioning equipment; the plan had been to fit ARC74 with the same facility, but time pressures made that impractical. It did, however, have one vestibule enclosed and fitted with a shower and toilet, and in this form its tare weight decreased to .
It was originally used as a first class, non-airconditioned sleeping carriage, then when the standard gauge line opened to Marree on 27 July 1957 it was used on the opening standard gauge train. After that sighting it probably remained in service on the Trans-Australian Railway, for up to a decade, being transferred to the Marree line by September 1967 and possibly as early as 1964. In 1964 the car was repainted maroon and silver, with a large "CR" emblem on each side. On this train ARC74 was particularly useful as it could be converted from sleeping to sitting accommodation during school holidays, unlike most passenger cars worked by the Commonwealth Railways which were sleeping only.
It is understood that it was used for some time as a dormitory car for drivers of road trucks being piggy-backed across the Nullarbor.
In 1973 ARC74 was withdrawn from service for conversion, but delays due to lack of funding left the car in a partially stripped condition. It eventually re-entered service on 29 October 1979 as VPB74, joining classmate VPB328 on the Tea and Sugar Train as a travelling store, using new Commonwealth-type four-wheel bogies. The original Pullman bogies were re-used as transfer bogies for locomotives undergoing maintenance, and were last sighted at Peterborough in December 1987.> On 23 November 1984 it was reclassed to OPB, and continued operating until it was damaged by fire at some point in the mid-1990s.> The Tea and Sugar was cancelled in 1997. On 8 November 1997 it was sold, with the freight side of the Australian National business, to the Australian Southern Railroad, and in June 1999 it was apparently either planned to be, or moved, to Parkeston. It was expected to be removed from its bogies (those being re-used on some other project), while the body would be grounded and used as a delivery base.
Mount Lofty Mount Lofty first carried passengers on 19 May 1928. After its second withdrawal in 1940 it was held for a year or so, then transferred to Islington Railway Workshops. In January 1950, Victoria's share in the car was sold to the South Australian Railways, at the same time that Maceedon was sold to the Commonwealth Railways. At some point consideration was given to converting it to an all-sitting car, with one compartment partially converted and another stripped out before the idea was dropped, partially due to the weight of the car. It was stored in the open at the south end of Islington Railway Workshops, initially with classmate Adelaide until 1954.
Commonwealth Railways had already purchased Macedon and Hopkins from the Victorian Railways in 1950 and numbered those two carriages 74 and 75, reserving the number 73 in case they later acquired Mount Lofty, but the sale had apparently fallen through at the time.