CAPY
Capacity
CAPY is the car's nominal capacity, a rounded design figure, not the legal load limit.
CAPY is short for capacity. On older freight cars it is stenciled in pounds, often as a round number such as 100000 or 140000. It is the car's nominal carrying capacity: a design rating, not a fresh weighing of that particular car.
Read it next to the load limit and the light weight, not by itself. The load limit is the number that says how much commodity the car is allowed to carry now. Capacity is the coarser figure the car was built around. A car can be restenciled, reweighed, or rebuilt so that the load limit and the capacity number no longer look like a simple pair.
Many newer cars drop CAPY and keep the load limit. If you only see one weight that looks like a maximum, check the letters in front of it. LD LMT is the operating limit. CAPY is the older nominal rating.
Capacity does not tell you the car's volume. A covered hopper's cubic feet, when they are stenciled, are a separate figure. CAPY is about weight.
Common questions
- Is CAPY the same as load limit?
- No. CAPY is a nominal capacity. The load limit, stenciled LD LMT, is the maximum weight of lading the car is allowed to carry.
- Why do some cars have no CAPY stencil?
- Later practice often dropped the nominal capacity and left the load limit and light weight as the weights that matter day to day.