I was looking at an ad in MR and being a Bostonian I found some MBTA cars listed. The problem I had was there were two types of cars. Commuter cabs and Commuter Coaches. What’s the difference[?]
Cabs had a small drivers room, essencially they were self propelled coaches for short jaunts.
Jay
The cab cars have a small engineer’s compartment to allow them to work “push-pull” with a loco at one end of a train and a cab car at the other. A train would be formed of a cab car and a few coaches. Using this arrangement allows a RR to avoid having to re-form trains at each end of the line. Usually, locos are positioned facing away from the terminus - this allows locos to be changed while the train is in the station without having to move the cars.