Re: 620 Class In New Livery

[matthew@mail.usyd.edu.au (Matthew Geier)]

In article <01be7c76$9c837a80$661e1acb@osborne>,
rod gayford <rodjg@tpg.com.au> wrote:
>What sort of morons in State Rail are spending money on old junk like the
>620 Class. They could have used single deck inter urban trailer cars
>locomotive hauled but got rid of them all.

 Locomotive hauled would not be viable if the Interurban trailers could
be an 'upgrade'. The loco has to be run around the set each terminal
station, taking up time (and a shunter). Locomotives are 2 person crewed,
so you end up with an extra person required. These are suburban runs we
are talking about.


> They also cut up the Budd cars which were air conditioned.

 Which had their engines removed long ago and became just another
class of AC loco hauled car. Bad ones at that - I used to ride the
Illawarra express trains to Sutherland every now and then and the Budd
cars had been 'let go' besides the Interiors falling apart they rode
extremely badly. I never rode them as self propelled cars, I just have
vague memorys of them spewing out black smoke through Sutherland when
I was little.


 What every happened to the remains of the 900 class fleet ?. Surely if
they need to refurbish some old railcars, starting with the slightly
newer and already air-conditioned 900 class would make sense.

 The 600 class (in various revisions) seem to have been quite a sucessful
railcar. They have outlasted 2 newer railcars (Budd and Tulloch) cars by
many years and are still going. They must be relatively reliable and
easy to fix.