Journal Article

Rolling stock orders in Australia are often for small numbers of vehicles with sophisticated requirements. The design cost associated with these small orders is a significant percentage of the total vehicle cost. A versatile design solution has the potential to satisfy various applications that may be required in the future in an economically sensible manner. The Hunter Rail Car was primarily designed to provide an urban/regional rail transport solution for the Hunter Valley. During the concept design stage, the Hunter Rail Car was configured in such a way to enable convenient modification for other applications such as intercity travel over longer distances. This paper describes how the design configuration of the Hunter Rail Car was developed to be able to accommodate a variety of configurations to suit different suburban and regional rail transport applications. The paper also provides some insight into rail vehicle acquisition and typical considerations for the design of passenger rail vehicles. All 14 Hunter Rail Cars have been delivered to RailCorp and are providing a successful, reliable service.