Talk:Passenger railroad car

Types

I'm planning on moving the "variations" sections back into the main car types section. Many of the cars in the main types section do not even exist anymore, while the "variations" are common today. Why separate out the new from the old? Don't understand at all. Fourdee 07:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

References? There aren't any (yet)

In case you're wondering where the references are on this article, there aren't any. This article is built from my own experience of twenty years of building models of American trains and railroads. As I find references that should be included, I will add them. slambo 17:21, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

Okay, there's a reference. Now that I'm adding more information on railroading practices outside North America, I need the references to look up the data. slambo 01:55, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

2005 copyright? Yes.

The Classic Trains reference is one that I just picked up today at my local hobby shop. As it's a periodical, the cover date (and therefore the copyright date) is a little bit in the future. The copyright date all over this publication is 2005, so that's what I put in the references. slambo 03:28, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Infantry cars

What about armoured trains and their infantry cars? I think the article should have a mention of those. Also it should be noted that sometimes various totalitarism regimes used freight cars to transport people, especially prisoners. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:39, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, military hospital trains as well. But, my original intent was to write about commercial and not military applications. I guess I could add a section on military uses... B-) slambo 02:08, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Please do that. I think if this article is to be featured, we need at least a brief section on various military uses involving human transportation. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:35, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There's a start with a couple photos from WWI of hospital trains. Now I need to find some more information and photos of other troop cars, like the cars that were converted from box cars. slambo 19:28, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Manufacturers...

I hate to leave this section so slim, but I've got to stop now to have dinner. I will be adding more to those listed as well as finding information on others. slambo 02:43, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Featured article status

Okay, so there were a few objections, I'm working on them. Unfortunately, the entire discussion was removed from the WP:FAC and archives page, so it's a good thing that I copied them into the todolist here. Once I resolve these objections, I'll likely renominate the article. slambo 16:12, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

The discussion was restored to the nominations page in time for one more objection that I haven't included everything that I now intend to include in the article. Yes, I'm still adding to it; right now I'm reading through some additional source materials to determine what needs to be added. Now that we're past Thanksgiving, I should have some more time in the evenings to work on it. The FAC discussion is now archived at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations#Passenger car (at least for the next month or so). slambo 16:18, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

It's now at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Archived_nominations/Index/November_2004#Passenger_car Petersam 19:45, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Could someone also add recent prices for a typical car? How much does one of these things cost?

I'd still like to see a mention of the smaller (mostly deep south) railroads that offer mixed service occasionally. Amtrak is not the only game in town when it comes to passenger trains in the US (aside from excursion/tourist) User:Pzg Ratzinger

Removed text

I removed the following text from the article:

==Seating plans==

The predominant floor plans are comprised of vis-a-vis resp. face to face seats, seating rows resp. face to back with split orientation (half in each direction) for trains operated in both directions and a combination of those principles. In regional transport we can find seats aligned with the tracks to give more room to the standing passengers. In scenic trains seats are beeing orientied some degrees to the window are used. Some design variants have curved banks of seats to form a lounge. Flip flop seats that can be changed from face to face to face to back orientation are not used much due to its weights and consequences of the additional mechanism.

While this information could still be valuable, I don't think it's worded very well here. Besides, the seating arrangements are different for each car type, and this text deals more with coaches than other types. It seems to me that seating arrangements are better described on the car type pages themselves and not here. slambo 20:48, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 00:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I moved the Talgo references to inline footnote style. The other references I'm not familiar with so I'll leave it to someone else to work them inline. n2xjk 14:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Good Article Review

This article is currently at Good Article Review. LuciferMorgan 09:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Has now been delisted by 3-0. LuciferMorgan 11:10, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• This article is a substantial crap, because:
  • it's been written by somebody knowing rails only in the US and (which are far backwards than Europe in railway technology since decades) and Britain
  • when dealing of "modern" years, it gives much attention to "tilting" trains, which are dealt extensively in separate articles here, and little to technology of standard passenger cars used today
  • it has pictures placed so that they create much blank lines
  • it's bad written (sometimes using contracted forms such as "wasn't" which are not worthy in any encyclopedia). --Attilios (talk) 19:05, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The regional bias is an issue though all of the rail related articles - most people only known the trains they see every day, and since the UK and USA are big English speaking countries there will be more editors from those places. I'm Australian BTW. Wongm (talk) 01:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

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merge with coach (rail)

It's a no brainer - they are the same thing. I'll merge into this article since it's bigger, (and more people live in the US than UK? what do other english speaking peoples call them), also there is a presedent eg "railroad tie" over "sleeper", "switch" over "point" etc —Preceding unsigned comment added by FengRail (talk • contribs) 20:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

done that merge..

"More people live in the US than the UK" - arrrrggghhh!!! Give me something to bite on! As someone based in the US, this makes me ashamed of my fellow-countrymen because this is a typical arrogant American-centric viewpoint. There are MANY times more "International English" speakers (based more closely on English-English) than speakers of American-English. American-English, for example, is the only form of English that saw a unilateral change in spellings (thanks to Noah Webster for that particularly confusion).

As for this particular page, as a rail enthusiast of many years, I can confirm that American rail terminology is in the minority worldwide, compared with the terms used by rail experts who speak international forms of English. Please also remember that the American rail system is much smaller (on a per-head-of-population-basis than in many other countries - partly because America decimated its rail systems following the advent of cheap air travel). So this arrogant decision to merge pages in order to make "carriage" or "coach" subservient to the predominantly American term, "car" (which most of the rest of the English-speaking world reserve to describe an automobile) - is indefensible. "Car" WAS used occasionally in British steam-era rail terminology but is virtually unknown in modern UK rail parlance.

A generic world-view page should be written in International-English, majoring on international terminology, not American terminology. It is then perfectly correct - under Wikipedia guidelines - to have an American "local-view" page written in American-English and giving more detail using American terms (such as car) and using American spellings (z instead of s, for example).

It is virtually impossible to accomplish this level of detail within one page because the rail terminology in America is so different in almost every respect to the rest of the world. Besides car/coach/carriage, some other examples based on comparisons with UK terminology: switch (US) v points (UK); railroad (US) v railway (UK); consist (US) v rake (UK); switcher (US) v shunter (UK) ... I could go on, but you get the point.

--621PWC (talk) 06:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Help

I deleted the subsection 'parlour car' because it's duplicated in the section Passenger_car_(rail)#Coach .. however that section calls them 'compartment cars', and I though parlour cars were of the 'open' type. Can someone (from North America) check this so it makes sense both in UK and USA English (Canadians, Indians, Barbadians too etc..)

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FengRail (talk • contribs) 21:31, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Also I've got to ask is Passenger_car_(rail)#Horse_car really a type of passenger car? —Preceding unsigned comment added by FengRail (talk • contribs) 21:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Prisoner car

The section on prisoner cars is interesting and I attempted to find which countries used them. I found many articles about a hoax where conspiracy theorists decried the existence of "prison cars" to be used for the mass incarceration of American citizens. The hoax arose around 2010; the railroad cars were in fact multi-tier auto cars with gratings on the sides. Probably trains are not used for transporting prisoners in the US because of the justified stigma of the Holocaust train. This forum post includes memories of ex-railway employees about the use of prisoner cars in the US in the past.

In Russia, however, rail travel is sometimes more practical than road travel, and that country does use prisoner cars. The car pictured has at least one visible end door. Note that the caption regarding the Arctic Sunrise is not related to the photo.

I didn't want to change "some countries" to "Russia and other countries" without evidence that other large countries do not also have prisoner cars, especially since the description of cars without end doors does not match. Roches (talk) 03:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Too general : the article tends to concentrate on US practice, and largely ignores practice in other countries

The whole article needs to be redesigned to separate out practices from various countries.

Take

(1) the simple use of the US term "Maintenance of Way" - in the UK thats "Engineering" (at various times, dependent on practices before and after nationalisation in 1947.

(2) Air-conditioning rebuilds took place in the late 1920's and early 1930's in the US, using ice as a coolant before more recent methodology. The result could be anything from a changed roof-line on both sides, partial over part, or "half-clerestory" on one side only (see Pullman "Dover Harbor (Harbour), The National Railway Historical Society, Washington, D.C. Chapter, Inc (see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/terry_browne/10466214536 )

More comments to fully after further study!

I note a previous comment (from 621PWC) criticising the US centric tone of the article - which whilst a little unparliamentary I cannot fault!

If it helps, as admin of a group studying just Clerestory Coaches the reader might like to study the group (see : https://www.flickr.com/groups/2031425@N22/pool/page1/?thumb=1 ), so that broader practices across many parts of the world can be elicited. (Most of North, central & South America, Much of Europe including the UK, the Levant, North & Southern Africa, some parts of Asia, and even Russia are covered).

Terry nyorks (talk) 21:36, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

A world view would be good. Please feel free to modify the article as appropriate.  Stepho  talk  22:52, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Prisoner transport by rail

Slambo added the following to my talk page.  Stepho  talk  22:14, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I see your revert of my recent edit. I took it out of that sentence because the other types that are listed there are specific rail car types that are and have been historically used in regular service in regularly scheduled passenger trains worldwide. While I don't doubt that prisoners have been transported by rail, in 40 years of model railroading and research, I have never seen or heard of a prisoner car being used as a regular part of a regularly scheduled passenger train. More clarification is needed for its inclusion in the article. Slambo (Speak) 18:14, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Prison cars are cars that are used for transporting prisoners. The prisoners are still passengers and the cars are still in a train. Hence they are still passenger cars. Whether it is part of regular passenger consist or not is irrelevant.

Also, there is already more clarification in the Passenger_car_(rail)#Prisoner_car section on it's use in Russia.  Stepho  talk  22:14, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Charabanc

For charabanc see Talk:Haarlem railway station#Charabanc Peter Horn User talk 16:12, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Two "new" types of passenger cars

For Belmond Andean Explorer#Belmond Andean Explorer Cars could some one describe Spa car and Piano bar car? Peter Horn User talk 19:38, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Bar car does not quite fit unless one adds a section to that article. Also Aston Martin 2-Litre Sports mentions a spa car So I'll make that Spa car (rail) Peter Horn User talk 20:01, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

How about 'specialty passenger car' ?  Stepho  talk  11:37, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

@Stepho-wrs: In other words a new article with two sections. What would there be in a spa car and in a piano bar car? Peter Horn User talk 16:03, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

There's not much to put in that hypothetical article. I would just give it a section 'specialty passenger car' within this article. Or just consider the spa car as a variant of the lounge car and the bar car as a variant of a dining car.  Stepho  talk  22:06, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Given that these cars (especially the spa car) appear to be specific to the train itself, I think they should be covered there. We can't write a general article about a one-off. Mackensen (talk) 22:57, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Agreed that full details should be at the specific train article. However, a quick mention here with a link to the train article would be good.  Stepho  talk  10:59, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 30 July 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Passenger railroad car. There is support for both the proposed "Passenger coach" and this alternative title, and a general consensus to abandon the current clumsy disambiguation. However, this one has virtues of WP:CONSISTENCY with the main railroad car and WP:PRECISION against Coach (bus), and has gained sufficient support in the discussion. No such user (talk) 11:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

---

Passenger car (rail) → Passenger coach – Procedural nomination in order to get this parallel discussion back on track. The claim in that discussion is that passenger coach is the more international term. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:37, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@Gonnym, RevelationDirect, Oculi, Bermicourt, Peterkingiron, Trainsandotherthings, and Grutness: pinging participants to category discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:40, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I have no knowledge in this field but either this page should be renamed to match the category, or the category to match this page. Having two different (actually three) names in use is bad. Gonnym (talk) 09:16, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support move - the term passenger coach is pretty widely used internationally, and more importantly, it is understood in most countries: the American term (passenger car) is meaningless in many countries (in much of the Commonwealth, for instance, it refers only to road transport), and the widespread Commonwealth term (railway carriage) is equally rare in the US. The term passenger coach is understandable on both sides of the pond, even though it is not the most widely used term on either. What's more, it is the term generally favoured by the International Union of Railways, which does not use the term passenger car at all. Grutness...wha? 13:01, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support As an American, my personal bias is to support the existing name, but Wikipedia is meant to provide international coverage of topics, and it's pretty clear Passenger car is a term pretty much only used in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The lead section of the article can of course note the various names used in different parts of the world. As Gonnym mentioned, the three names in use for different pages covering the same subject should be reduced to one. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:22, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Changed my vote to Rename to Passenger railroad car per jc37 Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:21, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

• Rename to Passenger coach car per [1] Passenger railcar or Passenger railroad car (per Railroad car, per RandomCanadian). I believe this has the added benefit of removing the need (rail) disambiguation, but not opposed to keeping (rail), if the disambig turns out to be needed. Incidentally, concerning ENGVAR, in doing the search, I noticed that Britannica used "car" [2]] and this is an interesting article too. And the OED seems to suggest that England uses carriage not coach [3]]. What most seem to agree upon is that if used with an adjective (like "passenger"), then "car" is correct. If not, then usage seems to vary between coach, carriage, car, and other words. Because of this last point, I Oppose the proposed rename, in that non-Wikipedia references do not seem to support it from what I can tell. - jc37 13:32, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

  I have never seen the name "Passenger coach car" used anywhere before. I'm not convinced the website you linked is considered a reliable independent source per Wikipedia, either. Other than the one website you linked, I can't find a single source using the term. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:04, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

  I understand, and neither had I. But in these discussions, we should be looking to what references say, rather what one or more of us may have heard or seen in our personal experience. And so far I have not seen anything that counters the Britannica or OED references, much less the many others I found. While "car" by itself might be inappropriate, "passenger car", since an adjective is used, is the correct usage, per the references I've found so far. I welcome other referenced sources to look at and discuss. - jc37 16:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

  Struck "Passenger coach car" and added "Passenger railcar", per my comments below. - jc37 19:02, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

• Comment As if this move discussion wasn't confusing enough, it turns out that "passenger coach" can refer to a bus or a limousine in the USA. [4] [5] [6] I'm not sure what name to support anymore... Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:04, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support. The International Union of Railways mainly uses passenger coach and that's also the English term used in their multilingual thesaurus to aid those translating railway terms into English. So it seems "coach" is international and "car" tends to be more North American, although I have heard "car" used in the UK sometimes. Bermicourt (talk) 16:15, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

  Well, I looked at the 2 thesauruses links from that article and didn't find the word "passenger" related to the cars/coaches. Though there was passenger train and passenger transport and passenger station. And they use "railway coach" for everything from sleeping cars to dining cars. And they also use "coach" for roadway vehicles and other things. And also use "railcar" as well (for example electric railcar, and double decker railcar). So I guess following that, I guess that this article talks about a specific type of railway coach - a passenger railcar. - jc37 17:05, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

  Incidentally, the same thesaurus uses both "double decker coach" and "double decker railcar", as well as using both "sleeping car" and "sleeping coach". So it could be that these terms are interchangeable in usage, even though I suspect there is a semantic difference. - jc37 17:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment To me, a passenger coach is an intercity bus. It would still need "(rail)" at the end. Perhaps "Railway coach" or "Railroad coach". Note: a coach is for passengers (not freight), regardless of whether it is rail, an automobile or a bus.  Stepho  talk  23:18, 30 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support in principle. However, a Coach (bus) and Motor coach (rail) also carry passengers, so neither Passenger coach nor Passenger coach (rail) are helpful. Passenger coach car is not used and meaningless. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:02, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - Ok, so as best as I can tell from various sources online (dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, etymologies, etc) -

  A passenger is a person riding in or on a vehicle.

  A carriage is something that which is carried, or can refer to the part of a vehicle that is containing/carrying something, or to the whole vehicle.

  A car is short for carriage but in modern usage usually used for the vehicle (or part of the vehicle) doing the carrying.

  A coach is a a section of a vehicle which has seats for passengers, it can also be an adjective describing a type of vehicle, or it can refer to the entire vehicle of this type

  A roadway or motorway is a road for road-based cars.

  A railway is essentially a road for rail-based cars.

  A motorcar is a car which travels roads.

  A railcar is a car which travels rails.

  And from here we get compounds and extended usage, like "traveling coach", which mean travelling by way of passenger transport, but which could apply to nearly any mode of passenger transport, including plane-travel.

  Essentially, we have a lot of words which "can" be synonyms, but might have subtle or not-so-subtle semantic differences, depending on usage. Which of course explains why references may vary a bit on this.

  And I don't think it's surprising that apparently over time, some people have come to call a car (or a carriage) which has a coach section, a coach. Or a motor car or railway car, a car, while relying on sentence context for clarity.

  So what do we do from here? Well, all railway coaches are railcars, but not all railcars are railway coaches. And I'm not sure if we could say that all passenger cars are coaches (seats, seem to play a role), but we clearly cannot say that all coaches are passenger cars.

  I think passenger railcar is probably the most neutral, and per WP:ENGVAR, probably avoids regional usage the best. It also is more inclusive of other things in this article, like sleeping and dining cars. And also removes the need for the parenthetical dab. YMMV, of course - jc37 19:02, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

  Thankyou for the summary - always nice to keep terminology clear.

  A railcar is a self-propelled railway vehicle designed to transport passengers. Which makes 'passenger railcar' both redundant and ambiguous (this article talks about the non self-propelled type).

  I suggest "Passenger coach (rail)", "Railway coach" or "Railroad coach".

  And of course, if you prefer the term "passenger car" (ie non self-propelled), then it too needs to be differentiated from road-going automobiles, making it "passenger car (rail)" - back to where we started!  Stepho  talk  00:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

  Actually no. There are railcars which transfer freight. (Wikipedia is not a reliable source : ) - See also: [[7]] Where you can find 2 thesauruses for international usage (as noted above).

  And if you search further online you may find that limiting "railcar" to only passengers, is only British usage. (See Oxford dictionary for example: [8].) Soo, another ENGVAR situation. However this time is works in our favour, as to someone from UK, a "passenger railcar" would be understood to be a passenger vehicle, and it would also in North America. I don't think any of the other usages suggested on this page succeed in that. - jc37 03:32, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

• "Passenger coach" is ambiguous. I think a far better solution would be to move this to Passenger railroad car (for consistency with Railroad car). This has the advantage of avoiding parenthetical disambiguation, and keeping internal consistency. If you're not happy with "Railroad car", I suggest withdrawing this and starting a more centralised discussion about this at the Wikiproject instead (since it will involve moving more than one page). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

  "Passenger railroad car" - fine by me. - jc37 10:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

  I support Passenger railroad car as well, I think it should be acceptable to just about everyone. Thank you Jc37 for summarizing all the different terms and coming to one that works best. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:49, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, and happy to help : )

  And thanks to User:RandomCanadian for finding Railroad car : ) - jc37 05:24, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support - it seems clear that passenger coach is a more universally recognised term. The term normally used where I come from is carriage, but the ideal here must be the term with the widest application. So I support the move. Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 00:28, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I would agree that in the UK we do indeed tend to colloquially say "carriage", but I think the railways officially call them coaches. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:55, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
• Comment It is clear there is inconsistency with the terms used for passenger carrying railroad cars/wagons throughout Wikipedia. A discussion at the trains Wikiproject may be in order to try and come to some sort of consensus or agreement as to what term(s) should be used. A solution could range from picking one universal term to using multiple terms and differentiating by geographic location. Ultimately I would imagine it would be similar to the distinction between sleeper and railroad tie, where articles use different terms based on the ENGVAR of the particular article. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:27, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: Just noting my appreciation for Marcocapelle's "back on track" pun. Sdrqaz (talk) 23:27, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Suggestion that two paragraphs are merged

The article contains two separate paragraphs about prisoner cars (Passenger_car_(rail)#Prisoner_car and Passenger_car_(rail)#Prisoner_transport_car). I suggest that these are merged.

This makes sense to me. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:10, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Passenger Capacity

There is nothing on the expected or average passenger capacity of any of these railroad cars, which is vital information. Here, 2022 in the city of Montreal, Canada they are making a new railway system and claim 128 seats a car and almost 200 people a car. I find nothing to compare this imaginary rail car to, to find out if it is a reasonable number or not .--Mark v1.0 (talk) 19:46, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Mark v1.0: 1) Passenger capacity can vary considerably even between similar types of car (so there's no real reason to include it on this page). 2) To directly answer your question, "reasonable number" depends on how much breathing space you deem to be "reasonable" (I guess you'd also want something more comfortable than this?). You're better off going to the WP:Reference desk, however, as this page is for improving the article directly, and not a forum to discuss random aspects of the topic. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:47, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Agreeing with RandomCanadian, there is so much variation. The carriages differ in size. Even when 2 carriages are the same size, one might have more seats (and hence less standing passages). In Kong Hong I have seen standing passengers close their eyes and nap without holding on to straps or hand rails. In Tokyo they have special attendants called passenger pushers to - quite literally - push more passengers in.  Stepho  talk  23:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian My complaint is not a random aspect. To know the square meter or square foot per railroad car is a definition of its size and I see no size in the description. "1634 passengers" https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/85789/which-is-the-largest-train-in-terms-of-passengers

@Stepho-wrs , Yes I have heard of the people hired to push people onto the rail car, so average passenger capacity expectancy is a subjective matter.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 23:34, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

How would we handle different types like:

• small train cars like trams and light rail,
• large cars with low passenger density like sleeper cars, dining cars and European intercity cars (normal seating, not sleepers)
• large cars with high passenger density like rush hour commuter trains in Tokyo and Indian intercity cars?

It's kind of like trying to give the average eye colour of people.

For your specific comparison, you would need to know what carriages were being replaced and then look up the corresponding article for that specific carriage. If that article doesn't contain the figures then it should be added for that specific carriage.  Stepho  talk  00:19, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Railroad car which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Railroad car which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 14:46, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Article photos

I do not agree with Redrose64 that we need multiple instances of profile drawings of passenger cars. One is sufficient. There's a photo of a compartment car in the article that adequately shows what a compartment looks like. There's also a photo of a compartment coach where you can clearly see through the windows how the compartments are arranged. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• 
  Compartment interior
• 
  Compartment exterior
• 
  Compartment plan view
• 
  coach plan view

I have included the images in the gallery just above here.

The interior and exterior shots maybe confusing for younger readers who have never seen a real compartment car. The interior view could be easily misunderstood as being a small room lengthwise at the back of the carriage instead of being one of many across the carriage. The exterior view thumb nail is not immediately obvious that those are doors along the carriage. Even then, young readers may think they are just lots of doors - they may not realise that each door leads only to a single compartment and may not look close enough to see that each compartment is separate form the others. The plan view puts things into context, which then makes the 2 photos much easier to understand. The compartment plan view also matches nicely with the coach plan view.  Stepho  talk  23:16, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, agree with all that. It's easy to forget that for a long time, virtually all railway coaches in the UK were of the all-compartment non-corridor type - the only exceptions were the "saloons", which had four or six settees arranged along the sides and across the ends, primarily intended for group bookings and debarred to the regular mortal. Side corridors appeared in the 1890s but for a long time were only found on long-distance trains, as they provided access to lavatories and perhaps a dining car. The railways were slow to provide such luxuries, since they took up valuable space that could have been occupied by more seats - a non-corridor compartment coach of the 1950s might have up to 120 seats in a length of about 64 feet, but a corridor coach of similar size, having two lavatories, would have no more than 64 seats. So to provide a comparable number of seats, a train would need nearly twice as many corridor coaches as it would have needed if it used only non-corridor. Twice as many coaches means more powerful (and thus more expensive) locomotives, and a heavily-increased fuel bill.

The modern perception of a compartment coach comes from period TV dramas and films - in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the train's compartments and corridor are both used to great effect, so that some people may equate compartments with side corridors. But although the last non-corridor compartment coaches were built as recently as 1963, they were entirely eliminated by the end of the 1980s, so people under forty may be totally unaware of their existence. Imagine rushing for a train, getting in, closing the door, and finding that it's standing room only - but the train is pulling out, and there's no corridor so you can't move somewhere less crowded. When you get out of your compartment along with twelve other people and walk along the platform to the exit, you find that you are passing several compartments that are empty (or nearly so) but nobody on the platform seems to have got out of them. This is just one of the several horrors that awaited us should we be commuting from London to (say) Carshalton Beeches in 1984. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:00, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

This article's scope is the entire world. Why should we dedicate so much of the article to just the U.K., exactly? It should provide a broad overview of passenger cars / coaches in general, rather than focusing on any one country. Sure, the U.K. should be included, but why should we be dedicating three or four images just to one type of coach used in the U.K.? There have been a wide variety of designs throughout history across the world. This is not a fair treatment of the subject, and intentionally or not is showing an unfair bias towards one country. And for the record, that goes for if the article focuses too much on the United States or any other country too. The article is in poor shape right now, hence the group of cutting edits I made this week to try and improve it. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:31, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying that compartments were unique to the UK? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

The photos in the article are (yes, one is from Australia, but the U.K. has had a strong influence on their railways). I still find it inappropriate to have this many photos focusing on just one type of passenger car when so many varieties exist. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

For the record, the Australia photo is of the Indian Pacific, which uses cars based on American Budd steel sleeper cars. American sleeper cars were corridor cars.  Stepho  talk  23:10, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

So we lack photos of Asian, African, American or mainland European compartment coaches. That does not mean that the type is unworthy of illustration, it means that no free-use images have been provided to us yet.

If we mention that more than one type of layout exists, we should decribe each one; and where possible, illustrate it, so that the descriptions are clear and the various types may be contrasted. If we allow illustrations of one type but refuse to illustrate another, that's as if we deny its existence. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:15, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Did I say that every single photo should be removed? At no point have I said anything along the lines of "the type is unworthy of illustration", and I ask that you refrain from accusing me of things I did not say. I am asking that the distribution of photos of various types of equipment in this article be appropriate and show a proper variety rather than an excessive focus on one type. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:03, 18 October 2024 (UTC)