Car Plates: All About Plates
French cars from....France.
Old C1 cars had a nice plate.
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BART legacy cars had a lot of different plates/plaques through the years - here's a quick list of most of them.
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Common Plates - Plates used across cars
CAR NUMBER PLATE
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These plates are on the corner of every legacy fleet car, sans the Y end of the A and A2 cars. They denote the car number and the car end (Y end = cab end for A and C cars; X end is the opposite end).
From the looks of it, the A2, B2, and C2 cars are simple sheets of aluminum. The A, B, and C1 car plates were molded to fit the shape of the feature lines of the carbody. The largest ones are the C2 car plates with plenty of room to spare a fifth digit. |
AUTOMATIC CAR IDENTIFICATION (ACI) PLATE
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Until the 1990s, BART used a slightly customized version of KarTrak. This was used to log cars for the purposes of tracking hours (which indicate the car's progressive usage until the next preventative maintenance, happening about every 600/800 hours).
These were mounted on the YR and XL ends of the cars, and replaced in the early 1990s with a barcode. Sometimes it's called the AVI plate (automatic vehicle identification). |
For those that lose sleep over pointless stuff like this, BART's custom ACI format was as follows (as per analysis of a dozen scans and order sheets):
Note, ACI was read bottom to top. CHECK DIGIT STOP 1=B car Y end?; 2=A car Y end; 3=A car X end, 4=C car Y end? 1s digit of car number 10s digit of car number 100s digit of car number 0 - 1,000s digit of car number (0) 0 - 10,000s digit of car number (0) 0 - Equipment type (not used) 0 - Equipment type (not used) 0 - Equipment type (not used) 0 - Equipment type (not used) START |
BARCODE
B2 car 1712 retained this sort of inverse residue for many years
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The barcode (BARTcode ha) mounted adjacent to the old ACI location was used until the 2000s, for the same purposes of the ACI plate.
The major problem for this system was reliability - BART can be dirty. |
RFID TAG
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A small RFID tag, mounted below the doors on the skirting of the car, replaced the barcode system.
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A, A2, and B2 cars
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I added one back for the final run (sticker reproduction)
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Rohr builder's plate - located on the cab door, and X end of A/B cars.
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Rebuilding plate - Adtranz and Bombardier (later rebuilds), depending on the year. On inside all A2 and B2 cars on the X end right side corner.
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C1 cars
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Builder's plate, mounted on the X end carbody. Dates range from 1987 to 1990.
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Scan of 354's plate. Legally removed after decommissioning and in the BARTchives collection.
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Builder's plate, mounted on the cab door.
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C2 cars
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Builder's plate, mounted on the cab door. IIRC the first few of them might have said "HORNELL, NEW YORK" given their assembly location.
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Lease agreement plate, located on the X end carbody. Mounted below the builder's plate.
I'm afraid I don't have a picture of the C2 car exterior builder's plate. They were hard to find (must have all fallen off), but my memory says that it had no build date, but said something like "CARBODY NUMBER __" (__ equating to C2 car 25__). Help appreciated! |
Fleet of the Future
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Located near the doors, the new cars had two different versions of car number signage. The first, adhesive mounted glow-in-the dark sign, was replaced in 2022 with the screwed-in type of sign.
Last updated: 4/21/24
