Glossary
Rail Car Repairer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential rail car repairer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key rail car repairer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in rail car repairer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Air brake
- Brake system using air pressure.
- Bad order
- Defective car tag.
- Blue flag
- Protects workers on track.
- Brake shoe
- Part that presses wheels.
- Carman
- Rail car repairer.
- Coupler
- Connects cars.
- Draft gear
- Absorbs coupling shock.
- FRA
- Federal Railroad Administration.
- Hand brake
- Manual brake.
- Journal bearing
- Axle bearing.
- Repair track
- Track for repairs.
- Rolling stock
- Rail cars and locomotives.
- Single car test
- Brake test on one car.
- Truck
- Wheel assembly under a car.
- Wheelset
- Two wheels and an axle.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Rail Car Repairer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Rail Car Repairer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.