St. Thomas Central Railway No. 57636, a restored CN express baggage car, October 13, 2003, at Waterloo, ON.

(JYolkowski at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons)

BAGGAGE CAR

Although passengers generally are not allowed access to the baggage car, they were included in a great number of passenger trains as regular equipment. The baggage car is a car that was normally placed between the train's motive power and the remainder of the passenger train. The car's interior is normally wide open and is used to carry passengers' checked baggage. Baggage cars were also sometimes commissioned by freight companies to haul less-than-carload (LCL) shipments along passenger routes (Railway Express Agency was one such freight company). Some baggage cars included restroom facilities for the train crew, so many baggage cars had doors to access them just like any other passenger car. Baggage cars could be designed to look like the rest of a passenger train's cars, or they could be repurposed box cars equipped with high-speed trucks and passenger train steam and air connections. A special type of baggage car came equipped with doors on one end to facilitate transport of large pieces of equipment and scenery for Broadway shows and other productions. These "theatrical" baggage cars were assigned theatrical names (i.e. Romeo and Juliet), and were similar to the "horse cars" that were used to transport racehorses.

A Central of Georgia Baggage Car at the Southeastern Railway Museum, Duluth, Georgia.

(Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)