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Railway terminology: Carriages vs cars vs coaches

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hexagon789

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Richard Scott said:
Don't the French use the word Voiture for coach which translates to car? Think German's use Wagen, also translating to car?
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If I remember correctly the word technically means a conveyance but of course like many words in English has assumed additional meanings.

There's also wagon as in wagon-lit for a sleeping car.
 
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When a train has one, the Buffet vehicle is referred to as the "Buffet Car". I have never heard it referred to as the "Buffet Carriage" or "Buffet Coach"
 
London Trains

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I've never used the name car in my life. Realistically coach and carriage are both fine, they both describe what they are, and I use and hear both a lot (GTR use coach, SWR carriage). Rail replacement coaches will always be called rail replacement buses to me, whether they are coaches or buses.
 
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London Trains said:
I've never used the name car in my life. Realistically coach and carriage are both fine, they both describe what they are, and I use and hear both a lot (GTR use coach, SWR carriage).
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You likely said Restaurant Car in the days when they had them. They were even branded as such on the outside.
 
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Great Eastern railwaymen refer to Ilford Depot as the ‘Car Sheds‘. Empty Coaching Stock are ’a set of cars’. So an Empty Coaching Stock train to Ilford Depot is simply ‘cars to the car sheds’, an often heard phrase in Liverpool Street Control particularly after a unit failure.
 
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Bletchleyite said:
Wagen is more generic than Fahrzeug, Fahrzeug would only be used for a powered vehicle or one that moves on its own in some way e.g. a pushbike (being "a thing that travels", literally), whereas Wagen is basically anything with wheels.
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Surely a 'pushbike' (or cycle) is referred to as das fahrrad, - or even das rad which is the same word as for the ''wheel'.
 
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AM9 said:
Surely a 'pushbike' (or cycle) is referred to as das fahrrad, - or even das rad which is the same word as for the ''wheel'.
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Yes, but there's effectively a hierarchy, just as there is in English. A pushbike is a "Fahrzeug" because it's a thing you can travel on, but more specifically it's a "Fahrrad" or indeed just "Rad" for short. I've never heard of one described as a "Wagen", that seems to require more wheels.

Of course without doubt the best vehicle in Germany is the "Luftkissenfahrzeug" - literally "air cushion travel thing" (hovercraft). But as that isn't wheeled, it's not a "Wagen". Whereas a car is both a Wagen (a thing that moves on wheels) and a Fahrzeug (something you can use to travel). And you can prepend "Kraft" to indicate that it's self powered i.e. has an engine, i.e. Kraftwagen/Kraftfahrzeug. (Though a DMU or EMU is a "Triebfahrzeug", which is again a bit different - and can also be a "Triebwagen", though I'd be inclined to say that a 2-car DMU is one "Triebfahrzeug" made up of two "Triebwagen").

And we said English was weird.
 
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Bletchleyite said:
Yes, but there's effectively a hierarchy, just as there is in English. A pushbike is a "Fahrzeug" because it's a thing you can travel on, but more specifically it's a "Fahrrad" or indeed just "Rad" for short. I've never heard of one described as a "Wagen", that seems to require more wheels.

Of course without doubt the best vehicle in Germany is the "Luftkissenfahrzeug" - literally "air cushion travel thing" (hovercraft). But as that isn't wheeled, it's not a "Wagen". Whereas a car is both a Wagen (a thing that moves on wheels) and a Fahrzeug (something you can use to travel). And you can prepend "Kraft" to indicate that it's self powered i.e. has an engine, i.e. Kraftwagen/Kraftfahrzeug. (Though a DMU or EMU is a "Triebfahrzeug", which is again a bit different - and can also be a "Triebwagen", though I'd be inclined to say that a 2-car DMU is one "Triebfahrzeug" made up of two "Triebwagen").

And we said English was weird.
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Fairly sure hovercraft in German is Luftkissenboot. In addition I've often seen the word Einheit used for a unit train. However we massively digress
 
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To make things even funnier, in German when referring to road vehicles 'car' means a coach (the thing you need a D licence to drive). Tourists sometimes get told off by the police for parking in those big parking spaces with CAR written in them.

My vote for best named German vehicle (stretching the definition a bit) goes to Einachsiger Dreiseitenkipper, or one-axled three-side tipper, which is of course a wheelbarrow.
 
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ABB125 said:
I was taught at school that "cushion" is "kopfkissen" (head kiss?); does "kissen" on its own also mean cushion then?
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Yep. Kopfkissen is "head cushion". I haven't looked it up but I don't doubt that something like "Stuhlkissen" exists as well, i.e. a cushion for on a chair.

To kiss is kuessen.

Anyway, unless you think a Fainsa Sophia inside a carriage/coach/car has a cushion, which is decidedly debatable, I think we may have strayed a bit now :)
 
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Bletchleyite said:
Yes, but there's effectively a hierarchy, just as there is in English. A pushbike is a "Fahrzeug" because it's a thing you can travel on, but more specifically it's a "Fahrrad" or indeed just "Rad" for short. I've never heard of one described as a "Wagen", that seems to require more wheels.

Of course without doubt the best vehicle in Germany is the "Luftkissenfahrzeug" - literally "air cushion travel thing" (hovercraft). But as that isn't wheeled, it's not a "Wagen". Whereas a car is both a Wagen (a thing that moves on wheels) and a Fahrzeug (something you can use to travel). And you can prepend "Kraft" to indicate that it's self powered i.e. has an engine, i.e. Kraftwagen/Kraftfahrzeug. (Though a DMU or EMU is a "Triebfahrzeug", which is again a bit different - and can also be a "Triebwagen", though I'd be inclined to say that a 2-car DMU is one "Triebfahrzeug" made up of two "Triebwagen").

And we said English was weird.
Click to expand...
The ICE 1/2 power cars are referred to as Triebkopf which translates as “power head”.

Presumably a works is a “Kraftwerk” based on the above?
 
ABB125

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Bletchleyite said:
Yep. Kopfkissen is "head cushion". I haven't looked it up but I don't doubt that something like "Stuhlkissen" exists as well, i.e. a cushion for on a chair.

To kiss is kuessen.

Anyway, unless you think a Fainsa Sophia inside a carriage/coach/car has a cushion, which is decidedly debatable, I think we may have strayed a bit now :)
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Thanks very much!
 
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There’s definitely a divide between ‘coaches’ and ‘carriages’ between TOCs.

GWR - coaches
SWR - carriages
GTR - coaches
WMT - carriages
TfW - Train formation not announced but ‘coaches’ used for splits and on CIS boards
Avanti - coaches
LNER - coaches
Northern - carriages
TPE - coaches
Scotrail - carriages except Glasgow Queen Street
Chiltern - carriages
Network Rail - Normally coaches
Southeastern - coaches

I think Merseyrail uses ‘x cars‘ on their boards.
 
cakefiend

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Richard Scott said:
Don't the French use the word Voiture for coach which translates to car? Think German's use Wagen, also translating to car?
Click to expand...
Voiture (in French) means car (in English).
Car (in French) means coach (in English).

Car and voiture tend to be used interchangeably in informal conversation, but voiture is the term generally employed by the SNCF.
 
py_megapixel

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Bletchleyite said:
Wagen is more generic than Fahrzeug, Fahrzeug would only be used for a powered vehicle or one that moves on its own in some way e.g. a pushbike (being "a thing that travels", literally), whereas Wagen is basically anything with wheels.
Click to expand...
I've not really seen either of those used on departure boards in Germany. I've seen "Kurzzug" and "Langzug" on U-Bahns to indicate a single unit vs two units coupled together however.

Often DB displays train lengths and facilities diagramatically, on blue LCD displays mounted similarly to the dot matrix indicators we have in this country, along with time, destination (but irritatingly only a few of the calling points!), and delay reasons if applicable.
 
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One term that definitely does come up on DB departure boards is "Kurswagen", which means "through coach". In practice these days that means portion working, but rather than showing the two destinations as "X & Y" as we do, they show one destination (X) and "mit Kurswagen nach Y" (with through coach(es) to Y). You also see a picture representing Kurswagen, which is like a little picture of a coach.
 
py_megapixel

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Bletchleyite said:
One term that definitely does come up on DB departure boards is "Kurswagen", which means "through coach". In practice these days that means portion working, but rather than showing the two destinations as "X & Y" as we do, they show one destination (X) and "mit Kurswagen nach Y". You also see a picture representing Kurswagen, which is like a little picture of a coach.
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That's interesting....

Either DB are very good at vagueness, or the UK are very good at precision. For example, as well as not providing exact numbers of coaches like we do, they often just put "Wenige Minuten später" which just means "A few minutes late" (while in this country there would be an exact number, even if it was wrong)
 
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Descriptive titles all seem to have a cultural history peculiar to different countries, there has been a transfer of words between rail and road transport, in the UK we refer to 'Coaches' (basically meaning buses with more comfortable seating used on longer distance journeys) many countries just say Bus, in the USA, airlines have 'Coach Class', we have Lorries as against trucks, then we get into the Guard versus Conductor debate.(also found in some bus companies).
The latest seems to be 'Train Station' versus Rail Station.
 
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