How are coaches numbered by IR?
Coaches usually have a 4-, 5-, or 6-digit number, where the first two digits denote the year of construction (e.g., 8439 denoting a coach built in 1984, or 92132 denoting a coach built in 1992). In some cases the first two digits may represent the year the coach was transfered to the zonal railway, and sometimes the year represented is the year the coach was rebuilt. One exception are some of the Rajdhani rakes of Northern Railway, which have coaches numbered 1XXXX (15XXX). (Not all NR Rajdhanis have such coach numbers; 2951/2, 2953/4 don’t.) An alphabetic suffix may also appear (see below). Many older coaches which had 3-, 4-, or 5-digit serial numbers are being renumbered to conform to this scheme. Often the zonal abbreviation is prefixed to the number, so that a coach may be ‘ER 89472 A’, or ‘SE 978052 A’ for instance. From 2000 onwards, the year of manufacture is indicated ‘00’, ‘01’, etc., as expected, in the initial digits, e.g., ‘SE 018051 A’. Occasionally, some combination zona
