Epoch Ib (1893-1912) – the second classification scheme
In 1893 the K.Bay.Sts.B. introduced the intermediate system with capital letters showing the main type and small letters showing things like loading length, load, height of the sides etc. It was similar, but not identical, to the Prussian system; in particular the use of the small letters was quite different. The following table gives the type designations in combination with type description and the number range:
- V = livestock wagons (19001 – 20000) – Viehwagen
- G = goods vans (30001 – 50000) – Gedeckte Güterwagen
- O = open wagons (50001 – 70000) – Offene Güterwagen
- H = timber trucks (70001 – 76000) – Holzwagen
- S = platform wagons (76001 – 80000) – Schienenwagen
- Special wagons, railway-owned (80001 – 85000)
- Special wagons, private-owned (85001 – 90000)
- Wagons of private railways (90001 onwards)
Examples of small letters used:
- l, p for long and very long vehicles
- d, h for low and high sides
- w, m for < and > 10t max load respectively
- e, f, y etc. for special features of certain wagon types
Peculiarities of this system were also that double capitals were not only used for 8-wheeled vehicles, but also for 4-wheelers with 20 tons load and more (e.g. OOm(u), a 4-wheel iron coal wagon). Triple capitals - SSS - were used for heavy load 12-wheel well wagons. The owner inscription was K.Bay.Sts.B., now without a coat of arms. A type without serifs was used. In 1909 the German state railways agreed upon the joint use of their freight stock, and founded the German State Railway Wagon Association (Deutscher Staatsbahnwagenverband or DSV). Besides the standardization of goods wagons, standardized wagon numbering, based on the Prussian system, was introduced. As far as can be traced today, the Bavarians waited until 1912/13 before applying it to old wagons, because the yearly amendments to the wagon roster book (of 1903) say “future” for the new standardized designations. Furthermore, the standardized designations were altered for some wagon types between 1909 and 1912, when they were given their final meaning. (e.g. for Rungenwagen, SmlRu was planned first, but they became Rm eventually).
Epoch Ic (1912-1920) - the third classification scheme
From June 1912 the K Bay Sts B used a new naming and numbering scheme for goods wagons as follows:
1. Wagons based at a given station, (Stationswagen = DRG Heimatwagen) had the name of the division (Direktion) where they were based.
2. All wagons of the rechtsrheinisches Netz, east of the Rhine, which could be used freely
- a) with less than 15 t load weight were designated Regensburg
- b) with 15 t or more load weight and wheel sets of form 39 were designated Augsburg
- c) with 15 t or more load weight and wheel sets of form 41 were designated Nürnberg
3. All wagons of the former Palatinate Railway (Pfalzbahn - west of the Rhine) were allocated Ludwigshafen
4. Private owner wagons received the name of the division where they were stationed.
5. All new wagons of the Verbandsbauart were designated München (except 1 is valid).
In addition to renaming, wagons were re-numbered according to class, see below. The change of designations and in some cases also numbers was documented in a new edition of the wagon roster book. On one hand, the divisions were used for owner inscription (instead of K.Bay.Sts.B.), in combination with a coat of arms (this was Prussian practice too), on the other hand they were used for a kind of sorting. Wheel sets of Form 39 had 988mm Ø wheels and 145mm Ø axles. Wheel sets of Form 41 had 1000mm Ø wheels and 155mm diameter axles. The date given for the introduction of Gattungsbezirke is 1910. This coincided with the renumbering of Bavarian goods wagons, as follows:
- G wagons 30 001 – 44 000
- N wagons 44 001 – 48 000
- V and K wagons 48 001 – 50 000
- O wagons 50 001 – 70 000
- H wagons 70 001 – 76 000
- R wagons 76 001 – 78 000
- S wagons 78 001 – 81 000
- Special wagons 81 001 – 82 000
- X wagons 82 001 – 87 000
- Private railway wagons 90 001 – 92 000
- Railway tank wagons 500 000 – 501 999
- Private tank wagons 502 000 – 504 999
- Other private wagons 600 000 – 602 999
- Railway departmental wagons 700 001 – 702 000
Although the livery of goods wagons was established as red-brown by the DSV with effect from 1 Jan 1911, the K.Bay.Sts.B. did not issue the instructions until 4 Apr 1912, so green wagons would presumably have been seen for some time after this. Unlike the DRG, the Bavarians used divisional names for generations rather than classes of wagon (however Würzburg was unused):
1. Old generation 1844-1858: 4- and 6-wheeled wagons for loads below 10 tons. Withdrawn by the turn of the 19th/20th century.
2. Classic generation (mostly Regensburg) 1858-1891: 4-wheeled wagons for 10 tons load; and a handful of 6- and 8-wheelers (mainly platform wagons) for loads of 15 tons and more.
- a. Short wagons 1858-1889, with an underframe length of around 7 m; the typical goods wagons of this period
- b. Ostbahn wagons (1858–1875); the Bayerische Ostbahn was a large private railway company nationalized in 1876; wagons with some differences to those of the state railway.
- c. Long wagons 1880-1890, with an underframe length of 10 m; mainly large-capacity vans and platform wagons.
- d. Transition types 1888-1891; rather short goods wagons for 10 or 12.5 tons load, but with “modern” design features.
3. Modern generation 1892-1912: 4-, 6-, 8- and 12-wheeled wagons with a max load of ≥15 t (prototypes for the well known Trix-models)
- a. Augsburg. All-Bavarian types 1892-1909; already the same main dimensions as their Prussian counterparts, but with typical Bavarian design features (brakeman's cabs, openings for venting etc.).
- b. Nürnberg. Transition types to the standardized designs of the Verbandsbauart 1909-1912; still typical Bavarian wagons with certain parts of the standardized designs (axleguards, wheelsets type 41); in most cases continuations of 3a, but in some cases (e.g. timber truck) direct forerunner of the standardized designs.
The term Prussian state railways encompasses those railway organisations that were owned or managed by the State of Prussia. The words "state railways" are not capitalized because Prussia did not have an independent railway administration; rather the individual railway organisations were under the control of the Ministry for Trade and Commerce or its later offshoot, the Ministry for Public Works.
The Royal Bavarian State Railways was the state railway company for the Kingdom of Bavaria. It was founded in 1844. The organisation grew into the second largest of the German state railways with a railway network of 8,526 kilometres by the end of the First World War.
The Royal Bavarian Eastern Railway Company or Bavarian Ostbahn was founded in 1856. Within just two decades it built an extensive railway network in the eastern Bavarian provinces of Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz) and Lower Bavaria (Niederbayern) that had previously been largely undisturbed by the railway. Much of this network is still important for local and long distance rail traffic operated by the Deutsche Bahn today.
The Bavarian Class Gt 2×4/4 engine of the Royal Bavarian State Railways, was a heavy goods train tank locomotive of the Mallet type. It was later designated the DRG Class 96 by the DRG, DB and DR.
Bavarian branch lines comprised nearly half the total railway network in Bavaria, a state in the southeastern Germany that was a kingdom in the days of the German Empire. The construction era for branch lines lasted from 1872, when the first route, from Siegelsdorf to Langenzenn, was opened, to 1930, when the last section of the branch from Gößweinstein to Behringersmühle went operational.
The Einheitsdampflokomotiven, sometimes shortened to Einheitslokomotiven or Einheitsloks, were the standardized steam locomotives built in Germany after 1925 under the direction of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft. Their manufacture made extensive use of standard design features and components.
The German term Verbandsbauart describes both a type of goods wagon as well as a type of tram.
Goods wagons or freight wagons, also known as goods carriages, goods trucks, freight carriages or freight trucks, are unpowered railway vehicles that are used for the transportation of cargo. A variety of wagon types are in use to handle different types of goods, but all goods wagons in a regional network typically have standardized couplers and other fittings, such as hoses for air brakes, allowing different wagon types to be assembled into trains. For tracking and identification purposes, goods wagons are generally assigned a unique identifier, typically a UIC wagon number, or in North America, a company reporting mark plus a company specific serial number.
The system of German railway wagon classes (Wagengattungen) was introduced in Germany in 1902 and 1905 by the Prussian state railways based on their system of norms, and was soon taken up by the other state railways (Länderbahnen). On the formation of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the system became mandatory across the whole of Germany. In the course of the years more and more adjustments to it were made. It was finally replaced between 1964 and 1968 when the two German railway administrations - the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the Deutsche Reichsbahn - adopted the internationally standard UIC classifications for passenger coaches and goods wagons. Today, the system is still regularly being used for narrow gauge goods wagons, because these were not generally given UIC designations, as well as on many historical vehicles.
The so-called Austauschbauart wagons were German railway vehicles produced from the late 1920s onwards which had common components built to agreed standards.
In German railway engineering, norms (Normalien) are standards for the design and production of railway vehicles. In the 1880s and 1890s, Prussian norms were developed for the locomotives, tenders and wagons of the Prussian state railways under the direction of the railway director responsible for railway engineering, Moritz Stambke. Later, these were largely adopted by the other state railways (Länderbahnen) in Germany.
Kriegsbauart refers to railway goods wagon classes that were developed during the Second World War for the Deutsche Reichsbahn. The start of the war was an arbitrary dividing line for the classification of goods wagons, and did not represent any technological change. In the period shortly before the war, goods wagons were already being designed from a military perspective. This was particularly true for the stake wagons of 1938, which are occasionally referred to as a 'pre-war class' (Vorkriegsbauart) of wagons.
Flat wagons, as classified by the International Union of Railways (UIC), are railway goods wagons that have a flat, usually full-length, deck and little or no superstructure. By contrast, open wagons have high side and end walls and covered goods wagons have a fixed roof and sides. Flat wagons are often designed for the transportation of goods that are not weather-sensitive. Some flat wagons are able to be covered completely by tarpaulins or hoods and are therefore suitable for the transport of weather-sensitive goods. Unlike a "goods wagon with opening roof", the loading area of a flat is entirely open and accessible once the cover is removed.
The old Marxgrün station was located on the Hof–Bad Steben railway which was opened in 1887. It was the terminus on that line until 1898. From 1901 it became the junction for the railway line through the Höllen valley to Gera and, later, also Saalfeld. With the end of the Second World War the Höllen Valley railway (Höllentalbahn) losts its pan-regional significance and it was completely closed in the early 1980s. Today a halt has been built on the site of the former station which is part of the Regionalbahn from Hof to Bad Steben. The village of Marxgrün has been a district of the town of Naila since 1978.
A covered goods wagon or covered goods van is a railway goods wagon which is designed for the transportation of moisture-susceptible goods and therefore fully enclosed by sides and a fixed roof. They are often referred to simply as covered wagons, and this is the term used by the International Union of Railways (UIC). Since the introduction of the international classification for goods wagons by the UIC in the 1960s a distinction has been drawn between ordinary and special covered wagons. Other types of wagon, such as refrigerated vans and goods wagons with opening roofs, are closely related to covered wagons from a design point of view. Similar freight cars in North America are called boxcars.
The International Union of Railways groups all special classes of railway goods wagon into Class U in its goods wagon classification system.
The fleet of Great Western Railway wagons was both large and varied as it carried the wide variety of goods traffic on the Great Western Railway (GWR) in the United Kingdom. This was the railway company that operated for the longest period of time in the country and covered a large geographical area that included big cities such as London, industrialised areas including the West Midlands, areas of coal and mineral mining such as South Wales, and Somerset and other important agricultural districts. In 1902 the company owned 59,036 wagons, and by 1926 this had risen to 88,580.
The wagon with opening roof is a type of railway goods wagon that is, nowadays, defined and standardised by the International Union of Railways (UIC) as Class "T". They are a large category of rail vehicle, predominantly used for the transport of hygroscopic bulk commodities such as cement, plaster, lime, potash and grain.
Goods wagons of welded construction were developed and built by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in Germany from 1933 to about 1945. With the introduction of welding technology in 1933 almost all wagon components were joined by welding and no longer by rivetting. This enabled goods wagons to be designed, for example, for higher speeds or for higher payloads through the use of different types of steel and other engineering changes, but their further development was so heavily influenced by the exigencies of the Second World War that, as early as 1939, the Deutsche Reichsbahn had to temper the design of goods wagons to the new economic circumstances. Because there were overlaps in the change from the Austauschbauart - goods wagons made with interchangeable components - to the new welded classes, the period of the changeover cannot be exactly defined. Several standard goods wagons and their classes are covered in other articles. Goods wagons built during the Second World War that were purely intended for military transport use, are covered under the article on Kriegsbauart - wartime classes.
