" Rolling stock has always been of considerable interest to us, because they are big, they're powerful, and boys love toys, they love trains.

We were invited by State Rail which is now known as RailCorp to develop a vision for the train. Our ambition or our objective was really to turn the rolling stock into something which was much closer to an aircraft interior. At first sight the train had to be clearly a step above anything that was produced previously and we certainly achieved that.

We at the time were looking for something which was quite unique and had a very forward thrusting look. Because everybody wanted it to look like a fast train. But a passenger train which is dealing with the inner city is actually never going to be a fast train because it won't be able to go quickly over spaces of several hundred metres where you've got stations close together. So the vision that we used and theme was loosely associated with Stealth aircraft with those angles which were becoming more visible to people at that time. And it gave us an opportunity to do a unique design with a very angular front and quite an aggressive front end. The reason being that you can't actually have a long sloping front end on a train which fits this particular envelope. All the previous trains have an absolutely dead straight front end.

So clearly the most exciting thing that stands out about it is that we partnered at their invitation with a company that had never built a passenger train - and we won. We created a design with them - they did all the engineering and technical stuff - but the industrial design was done by TDI.

And we developed a design that the operator wanted enough to buy it. And you know the contracts are worth multiple millions of dollars, so there’s a lot at stake - you’ve got to win - you cannot come second.

It is today the best double-decker train in the world - there's no two ways about that."

John Brown, Director, Design Resource/Transport Design International (TDI), interviewed by Powerhouse Museum, 2005

+ Trains
+ Industrial design
+ Australian product design

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