History
Commonwealth Engineering was a major Australian engineering and railway rolling stock manufacturer. It was founded in 1921 as Smith & Waddington, in the Sydney suburb of Camperdown building bodies for motorcars and buses. It was reformed after the Depression as Waddingtons Body Works and moved to Granville. The Commonwealth government took control of the company during World War II to produce materiels in the Granville factory. The government bought up a controlling stake of the shares in 1946 and changed the name to Commonwealth Engineering.
The company name was changed to Commonwealth Holdings Limited in 1963. It was taken over by Australian National Industries Limited in 1983 and Comeng became ANI's rolling stock division.
ANI sold Comeng to ABB Transportation in 1990. This later became Adtranz and is now part of Bombardier Transportation.
The factory at Granville that was responsible for building much of Australia's railway rolling-stock has long been demolished leaving little trace of this engineering firm. The site, which sat between the Great Western Highway and Main Western Railway line near Duck River has been replaced with new developments that include high rise housing and light industry. A plant was also established in Dandenong.
The history of Comeng has been published by John Dunn:
- Volume 1, 1921 – 1955 published in 2006
- Volume 2, 1955 – 1966 published in 2008
- Volume 3, 1967 – 1977 published in 2010
- Volume 4, 1977 – 1985 scheduled to be published in April 2013
- Volume 5 scheduled to be published posthumously in November 2013
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