V/Line ‘N’ Cars Standard Gauge carriages – Australia

The ‘N’ Cars is a fleet of broad gauge locomotive hauled carriages, operated by V/Line on regional routes throughout the state of Victoria, Australia. In 2010 fifteen of these were converted by Downer for operation on the standard gauge North-East line between Melbourne city and Albury near the NSW border.

As regional Victoria can experience very high temperatures during the summer months, and this is relatively long-distance route there was a requirement to replace the aging air-conditioning system with a new higher capacity system. The challenge for Noske-Kaeser Rail & Vehicle was to design and manufacture new split system modules to provide 50kW of cooling and find places to squeeze them into a carriage originally designed with 28kW of cooling.

The project was successful, and the trains entered service 2011.