Ever wondered what keeps those windows up on European coaches?

For what it's worth-we picked up a cheap and effective alternative to keep coach windows up. We installed cheap hinges...swing them in, window stays up. Swing them out, window goes down.

That’s quite the contraption just to hold up a window. I would have to guess that maintaining a fleet of cars with those in them is not inexpensive as compared to US practice.

The windows in most of the old carriages in our collection (Canberra railway museum) are a heavy wooden frame with the usual glass and window catches and they slide up and down in metal guides. The windows are so heavy that an ingenious counterweight device is used to make them "lighter." This is a spring-loaded roller, like an old roller blind but much stronger, pre-tensioned to help pull the window up. It winds up two steel cables hidden behind the panelling, attached to the top of the window. Unfortunately these cables rust and break. When one goes, the remaining cable pulls the frame out of shape, sometimes to the point where the glass is ready to fall out of the frame.

We have been using stainless steel fishing line to create new cables that won't rust in all the carriages we work on. Replacing windows is a fiddly job, made worse by the number of things that are under tension and often bite you as you are doing repairs. This may be the reason why the next series of NSW carriages used a much simpler and lighter window frame without the tensioned rollers. And every carriage made since then (1950's) was air-conditioned, with windows you can't open.

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I have had experience with this firm and never had any problems. Firm has been around for over 125 years.

It makes the spring balance for the heavy lid of the Ulrich Planfile fire-proof drawing cabinet that the water utility I retired from used to store its archived drawings. Had to order replacement spring units a only a couple of times during 30+ years.