In addition to passenger carrying vehicles there are many other railway vehicles which frequently form part of the composition of a passenger train; they consist of vans for luggage and parcels, horse boxes, vans for milk, fruit, theatrical scenery and motor cars. These vehicles are all fitted with the Westinghouse or vacuum automatic brakes for working on fast passenger trains. In Canada the passenger cars are very similar to those of the United States, and the vestibuled centre corridor is universal; automatic couplings are standard on both passenger and freight trains in North America.
The fastest trains in Europe are found in Great Britain and France; high speeds in passenger traffic are also attained on the American railways, whilst the Australian, Canadian, Indian and Argentine railways offer high speed services with heavy trains. The fastest start-to-stop railway schedules in the world provide for a speed of about 6o or 6r m.p.h. but during the journey much greater speeds must necessarily be attained to offset the com paratively slow start and the low speeds caused by heavy gradients, curves, or the passage of junctions. In Great Britain fast passen ger trains attain 90 m.p.h. and in March 1935 a L.N.E.R. train reached 108 m.p.h. on the London-Newcastle run.
Wagons.--For the carriage of goods and mineral traffic a rail way employs open or covered wagons, the latter sometimes known as box vans. The early British lines adopted for mineral traffic the chaldron wagon which had previously been in use on the "wagon-ways" drawn by horses. These wagons carried about 4 tons of coal and weighed between 2 and 3 tons empty. For general goods traffic the early wagons were less than 'oft. long, and if loaded with perishable traffic they were, and still are, often covered with creosoted tarpaulin sheets, a practice only used to any extensive degree in Great Britain where the use of covered vans is rendered difficult by the large percentage of traffic which has to be handled by crane at the numerous ports. The size of the British railway wagon has grown steadily but slowly as compared with foreign railway wagons; but the internal trade of the country is largely retail in its nature, while the average distance travelled by a consignment is comparatively small. The general practice of railway freight service is to offer a frequent service, as is done with passenger service, often with comparatively light trains. The average weight of consignments in a British freight train is about Itto tons, but the engine has also to haul the weight of the wagons themselves, hence the wagon designer is faced with the problem of constructing a wagon to hold the maximum weight and volume of capacity on the lightest tare, or empty, weight; with the increase of wagon capacity the less becomes the tare weight for each ton of capacity. Thus, a wagon to carry 6 tons may easily weigh 5 tons, but a wagon to carry 20 tons can be constructed to weigh only io tons; while in the United States there are many ioo ton coal cars weighing only 35 tons. The "high capacity wagon," as it is called, also occupies less space on the sidings, which is very important, but difficulties are experienced on the British railways in the use of such wagons by reason of the small clearances for such fixed structures as mine screens and the sharp curves on many sidings. It is an axiomatic rule of railway
working that the most successful type of wagon is that which can circulate most freely and can, consequently, be carrying traffic for as many hours per week or month as possible. The average capacity of the railway-owned wagon in Great Britain is about tons, though the standard to which all new wagons conform, other than "special wagons" for rails, boilers, plate glass and so forth, provides for a 1 2 ton capacity. Policies have been urged which aim at the adoption of a standard wagon of at least 20 tons, which would doubtless result in economies of railway operation, but it is very difficult for the railways to build a type of wagon which the trading community does not desire, and the latter in Great Britain has always insisted upon its preference for the small wagon unit in view of the retail nature of the country's trade. Another characteristic of the British wagon position is the large number of privately owned wagons, that is to say, wagons owned by coal mining companies, coal merchants, quarry owners and others who provide their own wagons for the railway corn panies to haul. Each of these wagons is registered and there are middlemen in the form of wagon hiring firms who rent out their wagons to coal merchants and even railway companies, as required. Approximately 650,000 wagons are railway owned and about the same number it is believed are privately owned. On Continental and North American railways the percentage of privately owned wagons is very small, consisting mainly of wagons fitted as refrig erators, wagons carrying oil, petrol or acid tanks, or even wine tuns. While certain advantages are claimed for the system of extended ownership of privately owned wagons, nevertheless it adds considerably to the expense of railway operation consequent upon the added sorting and shunting of wagons in the various "marshalling yards." Many important developments have taken place in wagon design beyond the steady growth in size. Spring buffers are now universal in Great Britain and on Continental railways, though the latter employ a screw coupling as with passenger trains, the British lines adhering to the "loose link" coupling which permits easier attach ing or detaching of extra wagons. This difference is, once again, the result of the short average length of haul on British railways, and the frequency of junctions where the trains have to be re formed for the different sections of the line. British wagons are fitted with hand brakes, which according to a Government order of 1911, must be fitted on both sides of the wagons, but it will be many years before all wagons in circulation are fitted with a standard hand brake operated from both sides and applying to all four wheels. The modern wagon has almost invariably a metal frame though the body of the wagon is usually wooden, often on a metal frame-work; coal wagons in many countries are now made of metal. An important improvement which has very considerably assisted the running of the wagon itself has been the adoption of oil lubrication for the axle boxes instead of the solid grease previously universal. Comparatively few grease axle box wagons exist on the British railways, and none upon Continental or North American railways.