“It is much more difficult to plan a conversion of older carriages than to build new trains,” says Lars Lindeby, technical project manager for the night carriage refurbishment at SJ. "Old carriages can look very different after all sorts of renovations over the years, and you don't know how extensive the rust is until you start dismantling them."
The oldest sleeping cars to be refreshed, the WL1s, were built in 1964-1965 and the drawings were incomplete.
“In some cases, we have had to go to the National Archives to find all the original drawings,” says Lars Lindeby.
SJ decided in June 2021 to have Euromaint refurbish the badly worn sleeping and couchette cars. The cost is estimated at 250-300 million SEK [€23-27.5 million].
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“We have found rust damage around the windows in many carriages, mainly in the sleeping carriages from the 1960s,” says Lars Lindeby. “The workshops need to spend 400-500 working hours on rust removal per carriage.”
Only the 22 sleeping cars from the 1960s, which are still blue-black unlike the other all-black night train cars, will be repainted externally. Other improvements will only be painted on smaller areas.
“We had a really long wish list with everything we wanted to do with the night train carriages, and we had a bag of money,” says Lars Lindeby. “We checked off the wish list from the top with the most important measures, and when the money ran out, we had to draw a line. There was much more we would have liked to do with the money; there simply isn't enough for more than what we are doing now."
With the comprehensive renovation, it is estimated that the night train carriages will be able to remain in service for another 10-15 years.
