Rail Dental Cars.

As the railways pressed forward to open up western areas of the state, many towns were small and were isolated from Government services. A number of services were provided by specially adopted railway carriages from around 1923.

Looking in the 1963 List of Stations, Stopping Places and Isolated Siding there is list of these carriages for that period. 

Department of Education  
Domestic Science Car 2.
Manual Training Car 4.

Domestic Science Car 2. Note the wood stove recess over the draw hook. 

Department of Health and Home Affairs.
Maternal and Child Welfare Car 7 (Baby Clinic)
Dental Clinic Car and Trailer Cars 1,2,3.4. 

A few years earlier in 1958 there was Domestic Science Cars 1 & 2. (Built 1923), # 1 was written off Sep 61 and converted to CW 15. # 2 was written off in Sep 89. The car was found stored in the workshop???   

Manual Training Car 3 & 4. (Built 1925/28). It appears both were converted to brake vans in 1942. No. 3 became 1335 and No. 4 became 1337. A note on 1337 history card goes like this.

Present Car 1337 entered service as Manual Training Car No. 4 6^th February 1928. Reclassified 2^nd brake 18/9/42 and renumbered 1335. Reclassified Manual Training Car No.4 11/8/48. Reclassified Display Car and renumbered 1337, early January 1969. Renumbered again as 1335 late in January 1969, then again renumbered as 1337 shortly afterwards. It still retains that number. The car which entered service as 1337 was a 2^nd corridor lavatory in service 22^nd November 1944. Renumbered 1335 February 1969. Oct 1977 no longer required as display car by Burns Philip & Co Ltd against for A. J. Crown. The car was written off Jun 84. A note on history card for Domestic Science Car No 2 showed that power for the car came from Manual Training Car 4. This indicated at some stage both cars travelled together. Talk about a rabbit hole???

1955 Department of Health and Home Affairs had Car 431 for transporting mentally ill patients. This carriage was taken off the books in 1984. 

Around 1965 saw the entry into service the Prisoner Car 773. 

Car 773 entered service in 1913 as a 2^nd class lavatory “BL” car. The carriage was modified in 1936 with the toilets being moved to the end of the carriage and reclassed 1^st class lavatory “AL”. In 1963 the carriage was reclassed back to “BL”. In 1965 bars were fitted to the windows and the carriage was used to carry prisoners. In Brisbane the trains would stop at Exhibition station to pick up and set down passengers for the carriage.   

In 1976 the carriage was modified, lowering the heights of the seats for better vision was part of the work. 

The carriage is currently part of the Pioneer Steam Railway fleet at Swanbank. 

Living in Charleville some 483 miles west of Brisbane during the 1950’s and 60’s I didn’t see any of these carriages. The first car I recall seeing was the Domestic Science car, it was at the back of Ipswich Workshops during the mid-1960’s. 

The second car I saw was the Maternal and Child Welfare Car, one morning going to work in 1972, the carriage was in the siding at Prairie. The next morning it was gone. The carriage did spend time in Hughenden and Winton. Some history of the carriage was recorded by Vincent J Little in the March 2004 issue of the Australian Sn Modeller. The history card for the carriage shows it was a 2^nd Suburban Car No. 452 built in 1904. The writing on the card was hard to follow, plans suggest it was converted into a lecture room with sleeping accommodation in 1929 and then as a baby and child welfare car 7. 1951 it was converted into a clinic car. The carriage was modified in 1964 and 1967 The carriage remained in service until about 1984 before being donated to the ARHS Museum. Around 1996 it was transferred from the colliery siding Rosewood to the Darling Downs Railway Society for restoration. At the time the carriage was not in very good condition.      

State Archives records show the carriage in 1968 worked as follows, Hughenden (3 days) Maxwelton (1 day), Julia Ck (1 day), Richmond (1 day), Hughenden (3 Days), Winton (4 days), Prairie (1 day), and Hughenden (3) and the cycle would restart again.

 
There were other cars that didn’t carry passengers but it’s time to get back on track and look at dental cars. The first dental clinic car was built in 1929 and was numbered No. 5. This was changed to No.1 in 1945. This was a very unique carriage, just 20 ft long, bogie at one end and a fixed single axle at the other end. It appears the carriage worked out of Cairns on the Atherton Tablelands and remained in service to the late 1970’s. 

There is quite a bit of information and tales about the Dental Cars on the internet.

Queensland State Archives “Root Canal Express”
Queensland Museum Blog. “Queensland Cavity Express”.
Australian Dental Association Queensland.  “My first day as a travelling school dentist in the 1950’s” Denise McEniery
Trove “Married life on wheels”. Two dentists marry and there first job was the Townsville Dental cars.

The carriage had a dental surgery and accommodation (very small). The two windows/door compartment on the end above the round tank had a seat (most likely turned into a bunk as well) and cupboards. The end window was a separate compartment with a toilet and a circular bath. The other two windows on the other end, had a door on the other side contained a seat and a cupboard, my guess this was the waiting room.  I couldn’t find a plan for the trailer wagon, one end looks like being a garage for a car and cables suggest where was a power plant. In later years LPG gas was fitted.

Blinds on the side give the carriage that far north appearance that was on other carriages in the division.

 

Ravenshoe Nov 66

 
Dental Clinic No.1 last run was in 1978. The carriage was given to the signal & telegraph section Townsville for storage. The trailer was given a new number C 40847 in May 1978. There are two history cards for the same wagon, the other being C 40848. The wagon could not be found in 1987 and was written off. 
 
In 1945 Dental Clinic Cars 2 and 3 entered service. Unit 2 worked the Central Division from Rockhampton and unit 3 the South Western Division from Brisbane. From time to time Unit 3 would be in the dock platform at Brisbane Central. The Dental hospital was just a short walk up the hill behind the station. The two Units were identical, one 53 ft carriage containing two dental surgery’s, two accommodation cabins, dinette, kitchenette, a toilet and a shower.
A 32 v power plant was located in one end. In 1958 the power plant was relocated to the trailer car, the plant room became another toilet and shower. The 32ft trailer car had a work bench, storage, petrol tank and garage for a car.  Both cars had roof and underframe water tanks with a combined capacity of 1,400 gallons. In 1953 the trailer car garage door height was increased.      

Dental clinic Cars # 4 entered service in 1950 and worked out of Townsville. This unit had two 53 ft carriages, Clinic car had two toilets & showers, O/C cabin, lounge, dinette, kitchenette, two surgeries’, vestibule. The trailer car contained the toilet and shower, power plant, attendants’ cabin, 2^nd dentist cabin, store & workroom, rock gas cylinders and a Commer panel van.

In 1963 all cars were altered to have 240 volts power system and in 1969 LPG gas was fitted. The cars were withdrawn around 1983/4. Clinic cars 2 and 4 with trailer car # 2 ? went to the ARHS and clinic & trailer cars # 3 went to Pioneer Steam Railway. Records show the two trailers or their equipment could have been swapped around.   

ARHS Rosewood. 

The two cars at Pioneer Steam Railway have been restored. 

Records viewed didn’t show any itineraries for the cars, they but did show that the dentists did visit locations away from the rail. Unit 3 appeared in a number of heavy shunting incidents at Jondaryan, Wallumbilla and Roma Street. One report showed the dentist chair had move more than 2 feet across the surgery smashing into cupboards, the chair was not fixed to the floor for cleaning purposes.       

Queensland Railways Plan P-29 dated 2.6.45

 
Model.
Construction was built using the following materials.
Styrene sheet for the underframe.
Evergreen scribed sheet and strip for the sides and end.
Caintode Flats bogies, buffers, brake cylinder, dynamo.
Kadee couplings.   

The roofs were picked up from a buy & sell. They were somewhat different with less detail to the roofs on my 3ft 6in Models Sunshine Cars and were a few mm shorter. Thus, the sides of the clinic car were reduced to fit. They were solid resin and heavy weighting over 80 grams, using the dermal and a milling cutter the weight was reduced by about half. 

Cut outs were made in the underframe floor for the 3ft diameter wheels to keep a uniform underframe height without the wheel rubbing on the floor.

The trailer car has only 2ft 2in dia. wheels.

Kadee # 58 were used this time, # 158 whisker couples were not available when purchasing my last order. A length of ⅛” brass tube is cut to make a pivot bush for the coupling shaft, a 2mm screw and washer hold it all together. The #158 coupling allow you to have a smaller yoke in the headstock to limit the cross travel of the coupling shaft. This stops the coupling hitting the buffers. Plus, when shunting and pushing back it reduces the side swing in the coupler.

There was no plan for the underfloor gear, using the photos it was a bit of an educated guess. 

Inter car gangs was fitted using nylon fly screen, brass rod was used to support the screen.

Blinds were made from scribed styrene.

The roof is removable, fixed to the underframe with 2mm screws at each end. 

In the 1960’s carriage roofs were black or a reddish brown, the white came along in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. For a period, I was using Floquil “Rust” for the reddish-brown roofs. Then I switched to using SMS orange. At the NMRA convention last year our convention bag had a bottle of SMS paint. My bottle was VR orange. Bring one not to waste anything, I had to use it for something. Time to do some experiments, first up some white was added, but didn’t work all that well, it looked a bit like breakfast that didn’t agree with your belly after a night on the grog. Back to the drawing board. Next up was to add some black, and the results are above. Down the track, they will be weathered. 

The two carriages were painted with the portable airbrush on one charge. All four external colours were applied on the same day. 

The history card showed the interior was painted green. I think it was a waste of time, once the roof was in place with the blinds in, it could not be seen. 

For the cream section on the top half of the carriage, yellow was added to white drop by drop until the colour looked correct.  In the photos, just about every carriage had a different shade. I guess the colour would fade quickly in the western conditions. 

To paint the red bottom red section the cream was masked off. Stopping to think about this the center railing that form the window sills was Tuscan on the side, thus the top of the sill would also be Tuscan. Bugger, will need to painting around all window pillows and frames. Placing the masking tape up, down and around the windows didn’t work all that well. Some brush work was required, don’t look to hard. Maybe a better finish would have been achieved if liquid masking was used. The Tuscan is PGC Passenger Red. Acrylic Laquar. 

Windows were fixed into place using Matt Medium. 

The completed cars were placed on Amby West for the Bundaberg show. Bugger, just before the show I noticed another error. A very big stuff up??? My grandson would have called it a massive mistake.  Kerrie painted a second backdrop for Amby West, they can be switched around from time to time.

One of the Tuesday Nighters decided to have some fun with AI.  

At first, I was going to wear the error, if I didn’t say anything, no one would know, maybe???.  After a few weeks the error got the better of me, the clinic car was altered to fix the issue. The ends were in the opposite ends to where they should be. The ends were cut out and placed in the correct end, that lead to the side lights had to be changed as well. Then there was no hand rail at the top of the end ladder. 

At this point the carriages are not weathered, as more decals are required.

A few years back a 3ft 6in Models “AL” carriage kit was converted into a Maternal and Child Welfare Car no. 7 for a mate who lived in Winton as a boy growing up. This model was painted using Floquil paints.

 

All up a very interesting project, modelling a carriage set you didn’t know that well, showed you can still learn a lot about your prototype. Plus, believe it or not you learn new skills went you need fix one’s mistakes, not to talk about the new words you also leant. 

Westgate Carriage shop is still building carriages, next month we will look at the Davidson Cars.

The June issue of the Australian Model Railway Magazine is in the shops, part two of Amby West is in the issue, it’s the operations side of the layout, it’s a bit different to that what’s in the blog, more has been added. 

Until next time, enjoy the hobby and have fun. 

Arthur H. 

Acknowledgements.

QR Plans
QR Weekly Notices
Australian Model Railway Association Queensland Library
Photos from various Modelers and Historians
Queensland State Library.   
Various Internet sites.