This is a New South Wales Government Railways 900 class railcar, also known as a DEB set.
If you caught a regional train in New South Wales between 1955 and 1988, there's a very
good chance it was one of these.
These things went everywhere.
They serviced pretty much every regional line.
The North Coast Daylight Express, the Canberra-Monaro Express, the Far West Express, the Northern
Tablelands Express, the Riverina Express, and later in their lives some CityRail services
on the Main South and South Coast lines.
I spoke to Ross Jackson, project manager for New South Wales GR 900 Class Restoration Project.
Well, the DEB sets were a solution to a problem the railways had during the early 1900s, which
was having sustainable transport that could operate cheaply, that didn't have to rely
on coal or water facilities, and could travel for long distances comfortably.
They were designed in the late 1940s, and construction went into the 1950s.
They were part of the first prototype of rollingstock the NSW Railways built that actually encompassed
the technology of construction of aircraft, where it's aluminium framed and sheeted.
This was a task or a trade that was used at the Chullora Workshops in Sydney during World
War II for the Beaufort aircraft and a few other type of aircraft.
When the aircraft manufacturers moved to Fishermans Bend in Victoria, they actually kept the guys
that had the experience with the sheet metal, with the aluminium with the aeroplanes and
put them on to the DEB set projects.
These are the result of that.
It doesn't look like much right now, but this power car, 903, has a lot of history behind
it.
Part of the last train to run to Bourke, on the Far West Express and also part of the
last train to run to Cooma when the Canberra-Monaro Express was retired in 1988.
It also has the dubious honour of being the earliest surviving 900-class power car to
have been painted in the polarizing Candy colour scheme, which we'll discuss further
in a future video.
All power cars in the DEB fleet were second class, so these are second class seating.
Unfortunately, this is sort of showing the way it was close to the end of its service
life, the chairs are sort of getting a bit torn apart.
Also the floor being a laminate or lino, you can see at your feet there, there are the
access hatches to engine one, and through the vestibule there you'll see the access
hatches into engine two.
So this is the shaft that connects the gearbox to the final drive.
Only one wheel per bogie is driven on the power car.
And here we also have an engine panel, so the guard can actually check.
And there's the ever-loved 'trouble' light.
Down the bottom there is air conditioning systems, so the compressor for the air conditioning
system in this car.
The 900 class was one of the first trains in Australia to have reliable air conditioning,
which may not seem like a big deal today, but would have been a game-changer if you
were catching the Far West Express to Bourke in summer in the 1960s.
So it does bring problems, you know we have 1950s style air conditioning systems that
need to be upgraded to make the train operate correctly, because of sealed windows we can't
open windows while the train is running.
The car itself is in actually really good condition, a bit of a clean-up, clean-up of
the seats and a little bit of floor to be replaced, and we'll have this one back into
service rather quickly in the grand scheme of things.
Sitting out in the middle of nowhere for 20 years, they are in exceptional condition.
The car we're sitting in here, 803, has actually been upgraded in the 1980s, and as you can
see it's got the interior prototype for the XPT, so it's actually first class, so a comfortable
car.
This was first class in the 1950s.
They've been around for the best part of 60 or 70 years, none work on the network anymore,
there are still a few around, for a preserved fleet there is quite a lot of DEB cars still
around, but unfortunately none are in active service and the moment.
The sets were retired around the end of 1995, this set was moved here I think somewhere
around 1998, as part of the Rothbury Riot collection, and obviously it's been handed
to LVR to restore.
We do hope to get it out of here time soon, probably in the next couple of months, we're
just waiting for the engineers to come and do the final assessment so we can take it
down south and we'll do the rest of the restoration around Cootamundra and Junee, and try and
get the set back into service.
751 actually is a fairly heritage significant car in the set, because 751 was custom-made
for the Far West Express, so this was built particularly for that service.
751 is one of three composite trailer cars built, with 24 first class and 31 second class
passengers.
As the clean-up project on the DEB set is on-going, half of trailer car 751 is being
used for storage of broken seats and various bits and pieces.
It's interesting, these seats here were out of the RUB sets and the HUB sets, so the Intercapital
Daylight and so forth, I don't know how they snuck into here.
This is TBR 855, which is the buffet car of the DEB.
They had two types of buffets in the DEBs, the big buffet and the little buffet.
This is one of the big buffets.
There's actually a few DEB cars still in circulation that have had the buffets removed and the
seating extended all the way through the buffet area.
And there you've got your little compartment for your on-board staff.
957 and 958 are power cars.
957 still has the original green interior colour scheme and vinyl seats embossed with
the New South Wales Public Transport Commission logo.
The PTC operated from 1972 to 1980.
958 has a unique external colour scheme, it's been repainted by restoration volunteers to
replicate the 'reverse' livery, a colour scheme that was used on Government Railways trains
from 1979 to '82, and the livery in which the restoration will be completed.
The endgame is to have this back into a hybrid service, we're trying to make sure we cover
the aesthetics of the heritage of the vehicle.
Towards the end of their working life, they put lino on the floors, but originally they
had carpet and I'd like to restore it back to having carpet floors so it's actually a
bit nicer on the inside.
But I'd like to see it based out of the Riverina area to do tours and fundraisers and god knows
what else we've been doing to fund-raise to pay for this.
It's a hell of a project, we started this project about a year ago, and so far we've
raised over, I think it's $36,000 towards the restoration.
Y'know, today was only supposed to be a quiet day having a look around the train and working
out some of the things that had to be done and we ended up with about 12 people here,
y'know, just cleaning.
It's come up quite well.
This video was made with the support and participation of the New South Wales GR 900 Class Restoration
Project.
If you'd like to contribute to help restore the DEB set, there's a link in the description
that will let you donate directly.
If you liked this video and would like to see more of the restoration as it progresses
and learn more about these vehicles, please consider subscribing so you don't miss out
on future videos.
Thank YOU for watching!