Yesterday I posted a quick guide to Chinese railway carriages, today is a post about a specific class of carriage: the ’25T’ class. These carriages are used on longer distance trains in China, such as the overnight trains from Hong Kong to Shanghai and Beijing.
Capable of travelling at 160km/h, they come in five types: the 12 car long consist on the Hong Kong trains is as follows:
- XL25T: luggage car
- YW25T: hard sleeper
- YW25T: hard sleeper
- YW25T: hard sleeper
- YW25T: hard sleeper
- YW25T: hard sleeper
- YW25T: hard sleeper
- RW25T: soft sleeper
- RW25T: soft sleeper
- RW25T: soft sleeper
- RW19T: luxury soft sleeper
- CA25T: dining car
As for photos of each type…
Luggage car: XL25T 206760. The end of the carriage appears to have a small compartment for the train staff.
Hard sleeper: YW25T 677234.
Soft sleeper: RW25T 554613. Compared to the hard sleeper carriage, none of the windows open.
Luxury soft sleeper: RW19T 554605. Note the wider window spacing compared to the standard soft sleeper carriage.
Dining car: CA25T 893513.
You can find a nice set of carriage diagrams at this webpage, and the carriage dimensions on this railfan site (in Chinese).
That completes the overview of 25T class carriage family: coming up next is an overview of the 25Z class carriages.