Road Marks

Road marks are the letter code that identifies the owning railroad or company of a piece of rail equipment. The term is one of several names for the same rail-equipment identifier, which is also called reporting marks or the equipment initial. That mark is the rail-equipment form of the carrier's Standard Carrier Alpha Code (SCAC), the broader code that identifies the carrier across transportation modes.

Usage

Like all of its alternate names, the road marks consist of an alphabetic code that, combined with a car number, gives a car its unique equipment ID. The marks tell railroads and billing systems who owns a car as it travels across the network. When a car is handed off in interchange, the road marks identify the responsible party for the equipment and for any repair charges generated through Car Repair Billing.

For a fuller description of how the code is structured and assigned, see Standard Carrier Alpha Code (SCAC).