Sydney Suburban Trains

On the newer Sydney Suburban carriage sets is a moulded insert above the electric carriage doors.

This frustrates me every time I ride the system. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to put it in exactly the same place in every carriage. 

Does anyone know what it does or why it is there? 

Thanks

Andrew

Any chance of a picture?

By "newer" I take it you mean the Waratah (or A-plate) sets which are the most recent deliveries.

Inside or outside ??

Cheers, Gary.

Rick, Photo below.

Hi Gary

Inside, I have included a picture in response to Rick.

Andrew

Thanks

I've only once been on a Waratah set so from the picture I can only guess that it's part of the air conditioning.

I'll pass the picture link on to gunzels in the area who will know for sure.

Hi Rick

I thought aircon as well but the insert is not open inside. Perhaps it fits equipment on the ceiling internally but that makes no sense as to why you would shape the outside the same way and not fit a flat panel.

Also thought it may fit an external tool that clips in for maintenance / safe working purposes such as a ladder top.

Any thoughts welcome as it is one of those things that frustrates me.

Andrew 

I'm awaiting a response from a couple of mates employed by the rail operator concerned.  Unsurprisingly they are offline for now and probably at work.

I'll post any information that comes to hand.

And yes that is a "Waratah" set, also known as an "A-set"

For those unfamiliar with the Sydney set-up the suburban and inter-urban electric trains are made up of units which can be 2, 4 or 8 cars in length.  Most trains are now 8-car though some 4 and 6-car combinations can be found.

Until relatively recently the formations were not as permanent as would be the case in most other places; they didn't change daily but were rather fluid over time.  Instead of a unit number in the sense that (for example) British trains have each formation carries what is called a "target plate" above the nearside buffer on the leading ends.  This shows a letter and one to three numbers identifying the set.

The more recent Tangara, Oscar, Millennium and Waratah sets have been designed to run in permanent formations but continue to show target plates of which the Tangara sets show the letter T, Oscar (Outer Suburban CARriage) show H, Millennium sets are M-plate and the Waratah sets use A.

Other plates in current use are C, S and K on suburban sets and V for the Inter City regional sets.  The use of G for "outer-suburban" Tangara sets has ceased and these are now plated in the T-series.

The allocated depot is indicated by the background colour of the target plate.  Mortdale = red. Flemington = blue, Hornsby = black, Eveleigh = green.

I am reliably advised these are air conditioning components but possibly not in use.  

Some systems elsewhere have been supplied with in-built upgrades possible so if they don't work quite well enough at first they can open up more vents and boost the system.

I suspect that is what we're looking at here - inbuilt upgradability.

Thanks Rick
Just seems a cost excessive exercise when a flat blanking plate would suffice. Must meet some government design requirement somewhere.
Andrew