Transporter wagon

Transporter wagons were uncommon in North America, where the practice of exchanging trucks was more common, as was at one time the case on CN's Newfoundland Railway at Port aux Basques.

This was a boon especially to exchange traffic on the extensive Swedish 891 mm (2 ft 11+3⁄32 in) network, which once comprised almost 2,000 km (1,243 mi) - in fact a number of local country areas in southern Sweden had nearly no 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge lines at all, just narrow gauge ones.

Special adaptors could be employed to couple a set of transporter wagons onto the end of an "ordinary" narrow gauge freight train.

Transporter wagons with the unique Heberlein-type friction brake system were in daily use in the old GDR (East Germany) well into the late 1980s.

Transporter wagons are widely used to get rolling stock including locomotives from gauge-isolated branch lines to main maintenance centres.

One is in the Didcot Railway Centre[2] In 1955, during an intermediate phase of the replacement of the narrow-gauge (1,067 mm or 3 ft 6 in) Port Pirie to Marree railway with a standard gauge line, train-lengths of standard-gauge flat wagons were fitted with narrow-gauge rails, allowing narrow-gauge trains carrying coal (from Leigh Creek coalfield), livestock or general freight to travel more quickly by standard gauge on the new, well-engineered alignment.

Transporter Trains are also used to carry road vehicles such as cars, lorries and buses through long rail tunnels.

For long distance freight transport, trucks with trailers or semi-trailers (without tractor) are loaded on specialized rail vehicles.