A railway freight vehicle designed with sloped interior floors to gravity-feed bulk materials through discharge chutes at the bottom. While North American railroaders call them hopper cars, much of the rest of the English-speaking rail industry refers to them as wagons. They are heavily used for coal, aggregates, and grain.
Heard on the job
The shunter is bringing a rake of hopper wagons to the loading bunker.
Also heard as
- hopper
Do not mix it up with
- Hopper car: Hopper wagon is the British and Commonwealth term, while hopper car is used in North America.