A train is a connected series of rail vehicles propelled along a track (or "permanent way") to transport cargo or passengers.
Motive power is provided by a separate locomotive or individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Although historically steam propulsion dominated, the most common modern forms are diesel and electric locomotives, the latter supplied by overhead wires or additional rails. Other energy sources include horses, rope or wire, gravity, pneumatics, batteries, and gas turbines.
Train tracks usually consists of two, three or four rails, with limited monorails and maglev guideways in the mix.
The word 'train' comes from the Old French trahiner, from the Latin trahere 'pull, draw'.
Read more about Train: Types of Trains, Bogies, Motive Power, Passenger Trains, Freight Trains, Trains in Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word train:
“Bodhidharma sailing the Yangtze on a reed
Lenin in a sealed train through Germany
Hsuan Tsang, crossing the Pamirs
Joseph, Crazy Horse, living the last free
starving high-country winter of their tribes.
Surrender into freedom revolt into slavery—”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The train was crammed, the heat stifling. We feel out of sorts, but do not quite know if we are hungry or drowsy. But when we have fed and slept, life will regain its looks, and the American instruments will make music in the merry cafe described by our friend Lange. And then, sometime later, we die.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)