British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

coach designations were a series of letter-codes used to identify different types of coaches, both passenger carrying and non-passenger carrying stock (NPCS). The code was generally painted on the end of the coach but non-gangwayed stock had the code painted on the side. They have been superseded by

TOPS Total Operations Processing System (TOPS) is a computer system for managing railway locomotives and rolling stock, known for many years of use in the United Kingdom. TOPS was originally developed between the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP), S ...

design codes.

Background

The

London, Midland and Scottish Railway The London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMSIt has been argued that the initials LMSR should be used to be consistent with LNER, GWR and SR. The London, Midland and Scottish Railway's corporate image used LMS, and this is what is generally u ...

and the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

developed systems of identifying

railway carriage 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 ...

s with alphabetic codes. When

was formed in 1948 it adapted the LNER system.

Basic principles

The codes are made up from a combination of letters, some of which can indicate more than one word; their meaning can only be determined according to their position in the code or the presence of other letters. The letters are: These letters (except ''Y'' and ''Z'') did not usually apply to passenger-rated but goods carrying vans (e.g. parcels vans, horse boxes, milk and fish vans). Their codes were an acronym of their traditional railway description, e.g. GUV for General Utility Vans.

List of codes used

The following list lists those codes that were used on BR cross-referred to the comparable code used by the LMS, with the exception that the letter ''S'' ("''Second''", later "''Standard''") is used where until 1956 the letter ''T'' ("''Third''") was used. Suffix codes ''Y'' or ''Z'' are not shown, as these could apply to variants of any or all vehicle types. In the LNER system, ''S'' stood for "''Second''", a class between ''First'' and ''Third'' (which became ''Second'' on 3 June 1956). The original ''Second'' was more or less abolished in the 1870s as a result of the

Railway Regulation Act 1844 The Railway Regulation Act 1844 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom providing a minimum standard for rail passenger travel. It provided compulsory services at a price affordable to poorer people to enable them to travel to find w ...

, remaining only in limited use for special services, such as those meeting ships (which retained the three-class system from which railway classifications had originated). In May 1988 BR reclassified ''Second'' to ''Standard'' but this did not alter the code. Multiple unit coaches originally distinguished between open and corridor types by adding the letter O or K at the end (for example, TSO or TSK), and also distinguished coaches with lavatories by adding the letter L at the end (for example DMBSOL) but these fell out of use when corridor stock became less common which enabled the codes to be restricted to no more than four letters.

Background

Basic principles

List of codes used

See also

References

Further reading