Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 July 7

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July 7

Reach wagon

Match wagon, reach wagon (a very small one), crane

In the context of British railways, what is a reach wagon? According to the Tay Rail Bridge article, "Double-heading of locomotives is prohibited across the bridge; consecutive locomotives must be separated by at least 60 feet (18 m) using barrier or reach wagons." No reach car article to account for American usage, and Google searches turn up things like How to Reach Wagon Wheel Motel, a kind of horse-drawn wagon in 1890s New York, and other things that clearly aren't used to separate 21st-century railway locomotives. Nyttend (talk) 00:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It's a railway wagon, used to separate two things. Rarely, as here, they could be used to separate two heavy locos to avoid local overloading. More commonly they were used alongside a breakdown crane under the long jib, so that the drawbar forces could be coupled, without pulling the crane by its jib. A similar idea, the 'match wagon' was for such a wagon (often with a cradle on top) that carried the other end of a load, such as a crane jib. Reach wagons were often simply flat wagons, not anything specific. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

They could (and in a few places in the world still can) also be used on train ferries, when the heavy locomotive isn't allowed on the linkspan connecting the ferry to the shore. The locomotive can remain on shore, using the reach wagons to reach out to the wagons on the ferry. I guess that's where the name comes from. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:29, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

So the locomotive pushes in an empty wagon, they couple it to the wagons on the ferry, and since everything's now connected, the locomotive can pull the train off the ferry? And by the way ["no cross-posting"], how are these vehicles called "wagons", not "waggons"? I thought the latter was normal en:gb? Nyttend (talk) 19:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes: and conversely of course, the loco can also use the reach wagon to push the train on to the ferry.

The OED (1971) suggests that "wagon" and "waggon" (with variations of 'a', 'e' and 'he' in the second vowel) have all been appearing for some 1400 years, with various UK and US dictionaries over the last few centuries claiming one or the other was more common. Noah Webster in 1828 thought "waggon . . . seems to be falling into disuse." The OED gives "wagon" as the primary British usage but says that "waggon" is still very commonly used here, but is rare in the US. I myself prefer "waggon" as more consistent with the initial short 'a' (compare for example with "wager" [a bet] and "wagger" [one who wags"] – see Digraph (orthography)#Double letters, third para). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.211.129.9 (talk) 05:21, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

dragon, flagon ... --ColinFine (talk) 18:47, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

"Waggon" in railway use was archaic by Stephenson's time. However road steam waggons, particularly the Sentinel Waggon Works company kept it for another hundred years. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:13, 8 July 2017 (UTC)