Вагоны и поезда: типы, история и применение.

Vehicle used for carrying cargo or passengers on rail transport system

A railroad car, railcar (American and Canadian English), railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck (British English and UIC), also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or passengers on a rail transport network (a railroad/railway). Such cars, when coupled together and hauled by one or more locomotives, form a train. Alternatively, some passenger cars are self propelled in which case they may be either single railcars or make up multiple units. The term "car" is commonly used by itself in American English when a rail context is implicit. Indian English sometimes uses "bogie" in the same manner, though the term has other meanings in other variants of English. In American English, "railcar" is a generic term for a railway vehicle; in other countries "railcar" refers specifically to a self propelled, powered, railway vehicle. Although some cars exist for the railroad's own use – for track maintenance purposes, for example – most carry a revenue earning load of passengers or freight, and may be classified accordingly as passenger cars or coaches on the one hand or freight cars (or wagons) on the other.

Freight cars (US/Canada), goods wagons (UIC), or trucks (UK) exist in a wide variety of types, adapted to carry a host of goods. Originally there were very few types of cars; the flat car or wagon, and the boxcar (US/Canada), covered wagon (UIC) or van (UK), were among the first.

The first two main line all aluminum passenger cars were exhibited at the 1933 35 Chicago World's Fair by Pullman Company. Aluminum freight cars have a higher net to tare ratio of 4.9 than traditional steel based wagons, which have 3.65.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union fielded a number of trains that served as mobile missile silos. These trains carried the missile and everything necessary to launch, and were kept moving around the railway network to make them difficult to find and destroy in a first strike attack. A similar rail borne system was proposed in the United States of America for the LGM 30 Minuteman in the 1960s, and the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison in the 1980s, but neither were deployed.

The Strategic Air Command's 1st Combat Evaluation RBS "Express" deployed from Barksdale Air Force Base with Radar Bomb Scoring units mounted on military railroad cars with supporting equipment, to score simulated thermonuclear bombing of cities in the continental United States.