Railway coaches are classified under an international system developed by the UIC. This UIC classification of railway coaches replaced earlier national classification schemes in many countries, such as Germany. The coach class is expressed as a combination of letters. It is sometimes followed, for example in the Deutsche Bahn AG, by a three-figure class number. In a broader sense the vehicle number displayed on the coach is also part of its classification, because it encodes other technical details such as the top speed or the type of heating system used.
For example the full designation of a passenger coach, including its coach number, looks like this:
73 80 29-94 708-7 Bpmbz 293.6
This article explains how this classification code on the sole bar of each coach may be decoded.
Read more about UIC Classification Of Railway Coaches: Main Letters, Secondary Letters (Deutsche Bahn AG), Secondary Letters (Austrian Federal Railways), Vehicle Number, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words railway and/or coaches:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)