A train is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives, though some are self-propelled, such as multiple units or railcars. Passengers and cargo are carried in railroad cars, also known as wagons or carriages. Trains are designed to a certain gauge, or distance between rails. Most trains operate on steel tracks with steel wheels, the low friction of which makes them more efficient than other forms of transport.
A conductor or guard is a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive. The conductor title is most common in North American railway operations, but the role is common worldwide under various job titles. In Commonwealth English, a conductor is also known as guard or train manager.
A caboose is a crewed North American railroad car coupled at the end of a freight train. Cabooses provide shelter for crew at the end of a train, who were formerly required in switching and shunting; as well as in keeping a lookout for load shifting, damage to equipment and cargo, and overheating axles.
Brake van and guard's van are terms used mainly in the UK, Ireland, Australia and India for a railway vehicle equipped with a hand brake which can be applied by the guard. The equivalent North American term is caboose, but a British brake van and a caboose are very different in appearance, because the former usually has only four wheels, while the latter usually has bogies. German railways employed brakeman's cabins combined into other cars.
The Safety Appliance Act is a United States federal law that made air brakes and automatic couplers mandatory on all trains in the United States. It was enacted on March 2, 1893, and took effect in 1900, after a seven-year grace period. The act is credited with a sharp drop in accidents on American railroads in the early 20th century.
Rail transport terms are a form of technical terminology applied to railways. Although many terms are uniform across different nations and companies, they are by no means universal, with differences often originating from parallel development of rail transport systems in different parts of the world, and in the national origins of the engineers and managers who built the inaugural rail infrastructure. An example is the term railroad, used in North America, and railway, generally used in English-speaking countries outside North America and by the International Union of Railways. In English-speaking countries outside the United Kingdom, a mixture of US and UK terms may exist.
The end of train device (ETD), sometimes referred to as an EOT, flashing rear-end device (FRED) or sense and braking unit (SBU) is an electronic device mounted on the end of freight trains in replacement of a caboose. They are divided into three categories: "dumb" units, which only provide a visible indication of the rear of the train with a flashing red taillight; "average intelligence" units with a brake pipe pressure gauge; and "smart" units, which send back data to the crew in the locomotive via radio-based telemetry. They originated in North America, and are also used elsewhere in the world, where they may include complete End of Train Air System (ETAS) or Sense and Brake Unit (SBU) devices.
A railway brake is a type of brake used on the cars of railway trains to enable deceleration, control acceleration (downhill) or to keep them immobile when parked. While the basic principle is similar to that on road vehicle usage, operational features are more complex because of the need to control multiple linked carriages and to be effective on vehicles left without a prime mover. Clasp brakes are one type of brakes historically used on trains.
On February 8, 1986, 23 people were killed in a collision between a Canadian National Railway freight train and a Via Rail passenger train called the Super Continental, including the engine crews of both trains. It was the deadliest rail disaster in Canada since the Dugald accident of 1947, which had 31 fatalities, and was not surpassed until the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in 2013, which resulted in 47 deaths.
Rail freight transport is the use of railways and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
On January 4, 1987, two trains collided on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor main line near Chase, Maryland, United States, at Gunpow Interlocking. Amtrak train 94, the Colonial, traveling north from Washington, D.C., to Boston, crashed at over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) into a set of Conrail locomotives running light which had fouled the mainline. Fourteen passengers on the Amtrak train died, as well as the Amtrak engineer and lounge car attendant.
This article contains a list of terms, jargon, and slang used to varying degrees by railfans and railroad employees in the United States and Canada. Although not exhaustive, many of the entries in this list appear from time to time in specialist, rail-related publications. Inclusion of a term in this list does not necessarily imply its universal adoption by all railfans and railroad employees, and there may be significant regional variation in usage.
Morristown station is a NJ Transit rail station on the Morristown Line, serving the town of Morristown, in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. It serves an average of 1,800 passengers on a typical weekday. Construction of the historic station began in 1912 and the facility opened November 3, 1913. A station agent and waiting room are available weekdays. The station's interior was featured in Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" video in 1984. Just west of the station, at Baker Interlocking, the Morristown and Erie Railway branches off the NJT line. The M&E's offices and shop are here.
A mixed train or mixed consist is a train that contains both passenger and freight cars or wagons. In some countries, the term refers to a freight train carrying various different types of freight rather a single commodity. Although common in the early days of railways, by the 20th century they were largely confined to branch lines with little traffic. Typically, service was slower, because mixed trains usually involved the shunting (switching) of rolling stock at stops along the way. However, some earlier passenger expresses, which also hauled time-sensitive freight in covered goods wagons (boxcars), would now be termed mixed trains. Generally, toward the end of the mixed train era, shunting at intermediate stops had significantly diminished. Most railway passenger and freight services are now administered separately.
Electronically controlled pneumatic brakes are a type of railway braking systems.
A brakeman's cabin or brakeman's caboose (US) was a small one-man compartment at one end of a railway wagon to provide shelter for the brakeman from the weather and in which equipment for manually operating the wagon brake was located. They were built in the days before continuous braking was available and the locomotive brake needed to be augmented by brakemen applying the wagon brakes individually.
The Rennert railroad accident occurred in Rennert, North Carolina, on December 16, 1943. Seventy four people were killed when the northbound Tamiami Champion, an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad passenger train, struck the rear two cars of its southbound counterpart, which had derailed. It remains the deadliest train wreck ever in North Carolina.
The Brakemen's Brotherhood was an early American railroad brotherhood established in 1873. The group was a secret society organizing railroad brakemen into a fraternal benefit society and trade union. The organization was largely destroyed in the aftermath of the failed Great Railroad Strike of 1877, although it continued to maintain an existence nationwide through the 1880s.
The Harvey train collision took place on October 12, 1979, when the Shawnee train operated by Amtrak between Carbondale and Chicago Union Station crashed into a parked Illinois Central Gulf freight train, leading to the death of two crew members.
On the evening of January 13, 1882, a southbound New York Central passenger train crashed into the rear of another one stopped on the tracks along Spuyten Duyvil Creek in the similarly named neighborhood of the New York City borough of The Bronx. Eight people were killed, and 19 seriously injured, by the crash and fires afterwards, fires that neighborhood residents and crew extinguished by rolling large snowballs into them until local firefighters arrived. Among the dead was State Senator Webster Wagner, inventor of the sleeping cars used on the train, between two of which he was crushed to death, and a newlywed couple who died together after the bride refused to allow a rescuer to cut her clothing so she could escape. It was the deadliest rail accident in New York City at that time, remaining so for another 20 years.
