Z Type Carriage

Z Type Carriage

The Z type carriages are an air conditioned steel passenger carriage used on the railways of Victoria, Australia. The carriages were constructed by the Victorian Railways from 1957 for use on intrastate services.

Two major types of carriage were constructed - thirteen AZ first class cars with a closely spaced but small windows, and twelve BZ second class cars with wider spaced but larger windows (the thirteenth BZ entered service on Standard Gauge). Carriages were provided with a saloon layout, with 2+2 reversible seating provided, with each row lining up with the windows. First class was provided with more legroom than second. An internal partition existed between the two ends of the saloon, but was removed in later years. A single twinette sleeping car was also built in a Z type body shell, entering service in 1963; it had 20 berths.

A number of carriages were placed onto standard gauge bogies from 1962 for use on interstate trains such as the Spirit of Progress. With the end of these trains in the 1980s they were placed back onto the broad gauge. During this time a number of AZ type carriages were provided with conductor compartments and recoded to ACZ.

The cars were made redundant by the early 1990s with the introduction of the Sprinter railcars, and a number were sold to West Coast Railway. After the demise of WCR some cars were acquired by V/Line, with the remainder passed to preservation groups such as R707 Operations.

The cars still with V/Line were refurbished from 1995, being provided with 2+3 seating in the N type carriage style, with some carriages also receiving wider doors and toilets with wheelchair access. Today only a handful of Z type carriages remain in unaltered form.