A railroad car, railcar, railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck, also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or passengers on a rail transport network. Such cars, when coupled together and hauled by one or more locomotives, form a train. Alternatively, some passenger cars are self-propelled in which case they may be either single railcars or make up multiple units.
A boxcar is the North American (AAR) term for a railroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carry freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is considered one of the most versatile since it can carry most loads. Boxcars have side sliding doors of varying size and operation, and some include end doors and adjustable bulkheads to load very large items.
A tank car is a type of railroad car or rolling stock designed to transport liquid and gaseous commodities.
A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are distinct from wagonload trains, which comprise differing numbers of cars for various customers.
Loadhaul Ltd. was a railfreight operator based in the north-east of the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1994, as part of the privatisation of British Rail, and acquired in 1996 by a consortium headed by Wisconsin Central, then merged into a new company English Welsh & Scottish Railway. It is now part of DB Cargo.
In North American railroad terminology, a gondola is an open-topped rail vehicle used for transporting loose bulk materials. Because of their low side walls, gondolas are also suitable for the carriage of such high-density cargos as steel plates or coils, or of bulky items such as prefabricated sections of rail track. Gondolas are distinct from hopper cars in that they do not have doors on their floor to empty cargo.
Hawker Siddeley Canada was the Canadian unit of the Hawker Siddeley Group of the United Kingdom and manufactured railcars, subway cars, streetcars, aircraft engines and ships from the 1960s to 1980s.
A covered hopper is a self-clearing, enclosed, weatherproof railroad freight car. It has a fixed roof, sides, and ends with openings for loading through the top and unloading through the bottom. Covered hopper cars are designed for carrying dry bulk loads, such as grain, sand, clay and Portland cement.
A rotary car dumper or wagon tippler (UK) is a mechanism used for unloading certain railroad cars such as hopper cars, gondolas or mine cars. It holds the rail car to a section of track and then rotates the track and car together to dump out the contents. Used with gondola cars, it is making open hopper cars obsolete. Because hopper cars require sloped chutes in order to direct the contents to the bottom dump doors (hatches) for unloading, gondola cars allow cars to be lower, thus lowering their center of gravity, while carrying the same gross rail load. Cars are equipped with rotary couplers to allow dumping them while they are still coupled; a "Double Rotary" gondola or hopper is has rotary couplers on both ends to allow it to be unloaded while it remains coupled to stationary cars at each end.
Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
Bulk cargo is commodity cargo that is transported unpackaged in large quantities.
GATX Corporation is a railcar lessor that owns fleets in North America, Europe, and Asia. In addition, jointly with Rolls-Royce Limited, it owns one of the largest aircraft spare engine lease portfolios. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. As of December 31, 2020, the company owned 148,939 rail cars, including 83,959 tank cars, 64,980 freight cars, and 645 locomotives. Other major car types owned include covered hoppers, open-top hopper cars, and gondolas. It primarily serves the petroleum industry, chemical industry, food industry, mining industry, and transportation industry.
A mineral wagon or coal truck is a small open-topped railway goods wagon used in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to carry coal, ores and other mine products.
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.
Open wagons form a large group of railway goods wagons designed primarily for the transportation of bulk goods that are not moisture-retentive and can usually be tipped, dumped or shovelled. The International Union of Railways (UIC) distinguishes between ordinary wagons and special wagons (F/6). Open wagons often form a significant part of a railway company's goods wagon fleet; for example, forming just under 40% of the Deutsche Bahn's total goods wagon stock in Germany.
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 Victorian Railways in Australia have had a vast range of hopper-type wagons over the last century, for transporting anything from grains through fuel to various powders.
A new wagon numbering system was adopted in Indian Railways in 2003. Wagons are allocated 11 digits, making it easy for identification and computerization of a wagon's information. The first two digits indicate Type of Wagon, the third and fourth digits indicate Owning Railway Zone, the fifth and sixth digits indicate Year of Manufacture, the seventh through tenth digits indicate Individual Wagon Number, and the last digit is a Check digit.
A Helix Dumper is a rail transport and unloading solution, designed for continuous rolling discharge of bulk commodities. Originally developed for the iron ore industry, the Helix Dumper system can handle many types of fine-grained and potentially sticky commodities. When the Helix Dumper wagon enters the unloading area, a wheel at the top of the wagon makes contact with the spiral-shaped rigid guide that constitutes the unloading station. As the wheel travels along the path of the guide, the wagon chassis remains on the rails while the body of the wagon is rotated 148 degrees to dump its load. After the rotation, the direction of the guide changes and the wagon body is returned to its normal position. The Helix Dumper has a discharge rate of up to 25,000 tonnes per hour.
