Articulated trains and trams - terminology

[LickeyIncliner]

Articulated trains and trams come in at least two varieties :

- those where the intermediate bogies are shared between two vehicles e.g. classes 755 and 777

- those where there are two axles under the "odd-numbered" vehicles of the unit, and the "even-numbered" vehicles are suspended between them, e.g. the present Edinburgh trams (and presumably CAF Urbos 3 trams on other networks).

My question: is there a simple way to distinguish between these designs when describing a train or tram? As for example in describing a bridge one can refer to a suspension bridge or an arch bridge without having to go into lengthy explanation.

(I ask the question out of pure curiosity, not because I want to start a debate about the merits of different designs!)

 

[Skie]

Jacob’s bogies are a bogie that supports two carriages, as seen on the 777 and 755

Not sure if the other type have a name. I’d guess it’s more to do with the vehicle design than the bogie itself.

 

[DanNCL]

The terms I use myself are Jacob’s bogie articulated for stock with bogies between the cars, and suspension articulated for stock where not every car has bogies or may only have a bogie at one end. These might not be the official terms but they’re the names I use for them.

If we’re listing what UK stock is articulated, the list would be as follows:
Jacob’s bogies:
Class 231
Class 373
Class 555
Class 745
Class 755
Class 756
Class 777
Tyne & Wear Metrocar
Metrolink M5000
DLR B90/92/2K/07/09 stock (but NOT B23 stock)
Croydon CR4000
And for a couple of historic examples:
APT, both APT-E and APT-P
Metrolink T68
LNER Tyneside EMUs

Suspension articulated with bogieless vehicles:
CAF Urbos in the West Midlands and Edinburgh
Alstom Citadis in Nottingham
Bombardier Incentro in Nottingham
Stadler Variobahn in Croydon
LU 2024 Stock

Suspension articulated with a single bogie on some cars and two bogies on others:
Class 398
Class 399
Duewag Supertram

 

[nwales58]

You might be interested by:

Gelenkwagen (Straßenbahn) – Wikipedia

de.m.wikipedia.org

which is more comprehensive than the English pages. It lacks a table showing axle and body arrangements with names though.

'two rooms and a bath' is used in English for what that article calls bogieless middle section (laufwerklosen Mittelteil).

Railways: there is also the Talgo arrangement used widely in Spain, DB's ICE-L, DSB's equivalent and some exports outside Europe and includes passive tilt.