Melbourne's Hitachi suburban trains entered service from 1972, and served out city for just over 40 years, with the last ones withdrawn in early 2014. The Hitachi's were our last trains without air conditioning, and had drop-down opening windows, which was always fun going through the City Loop. They were also our last trains wearing the green and yellow Met livery, and inside they still had brown tartan seats – right up until 2009 when the remaining sets got refurbished with new seat fabric, tinted windows and the blue and yellow Connex colours. Connex was gone not long after, taken over by Metro, who just slapped their logo over the Connex one. Despite the name, these trains weren't built by Hitachi, they were built partly by Martin & King and also in-house at the Newport Workshops – Hitachi just designed the electrical equipment. Today, there are plenty of Hitachi cars surviving on private properties, and you can visit 187M at the Newport Railway Museum. There are also three cars under restoration by mainline preservation group 707 Operations, so one day, it might be possible to see one of these trains running on the network again.
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