A baggage car (US terminology) or luggage van (UK terminology) is a type of railway vehicle often forming part of the composition of passenger trains and used to carry passengers' checked baggage, as well as parcels ("express"). Being typically coupled at the front of the train behind the locomotive, this type of car is sometimes described as "head-end equipment". Passengers are not normally allowed access to baggage cars while trains are in motion.
A special type of baggage car came equipped with doors on one end to facilitate transport of large pieces of equipment and scenery for Broadway shows and other productions. These "theatrical" baggage cars were assigned theatrical names (i.e. Romeo and Juliet), and were similar to the "horse cars" that were used to transport racehorses.
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A resgodsvagn of the Swedish State Railways (SJ) in Malmö in 1988
Famous quotes containing the words baggage and/or car:
“It is up to my spirit to find the truth. But how? Grave uncertainty, each time the spirit feels beyond its own comprehension; when it, the explorer, is altogether to obscure land that it must search and where all its baggage is of no use. To search? That is not all: to create.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Fifty years from now, it will not matter what kind of car you drove, what kind of house you lived in, how much you had in your bank account, or what your clothes looked like, But the world may be a little better because you were important in the life of a child.”
—Anonymous. Quoted in The Winning Family, by Louise Hart, ch. 1 (1987)