GB/T 12817-2021General technical specification for railway passenger car (English PDF)

Foreword

This document was issued on 9 March 2021 by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China, and has been in force since 1 October 2021.

It replaces GB/T 12817-2004.

Classification: ICS 45.060.20, CCS S50.

1 Scope

China's national general technical specification for railway passenger coaches. It is the umbrella document for the locomotive-hauled passenger fleet - the conventional coaches that still carry an enormous share of Chinese rail travel alongside the high speed trainsets - and it fixes what any coach must be, whatever its class or builder. That reach is the point of a general specification: a coach runs in trains made up of vehicles from different works and different decades, over a network that spans forty degrees of latitude, and everything from its coupler height to its brake behaviour to its electrical supply has to match the vehicles around it. The specification covers the body structure and its strength, the running gear, the braking, the electrical and air conditioning systems, the interior fittings and the fire safety requirements, together with the tests that prove them. It is the document a procurement contract references and the one against which a new design is accepted.

About this edition

GB/T 12817-2021 is the current edition. It was issued on 9 March 2021 and has been in force since 1 October 2021, replacing GB/T 12817-2004.

GB/T 12817-2004 has been superseded: a specification that still cites it is citing a withdrawn edition.

The interval between issue and effect is the transition period. It exists so that producers, laboratories and buyers can requalify products, revise procedures and use up documentation before the new text becomes the one that applies. The date on this page is the official one from the record of the Standardization Administration.

Classification and status

GB/T 12817-2021 is classified under ICS 45.060.20, in the field of railway engineering. ICS is the International Classification for Standards, the same scheme used by ISO and by the national bodies of most countries, which is what allows a Chinese standard to be placed beside its foreign counterparts on subject rather than on number.

Its Chinese Standard Classification code is CCS S50. CCS is the domestic scheme, a letter for the sector and two digits for the subject within it, and it is the code by which the standard is filed and searched in China.

The GB/T prefix marks a recommended national standard. It is not, in itself, law: it becomes binding when a contract names it, when a regulation or a mandatory standard refers to it, or when a producer declares conformity with it. In practice that covers most of the cases in which it will be read - a purchase specification, an inspection agreement or a certification scheme.

How a Chinese national standard is set out

Chinese national standards are drafted to the rules of GB/T 1.1, which fixes the order in which a standard is set out. The document opens with a foreword recording the issuing bodies, the relationship to any previous edition and the technical committee responsible for it. Clause 1 is the scope. Clause 2 lists the normative references - the other standards that have to be applied together with this one, and without which its requirements cannot be met. Clause 3 gives the terms and definitions. The technical clauses follow: the requirements themselves, the test or measurement methods by which conformity is established, the inspection rules that say how a lot is sampled and judged, and, for a product standard, the provisions on marking, packaging, transport and storage. Annexes, normative or informative, come last.

GB/T 12817-2021 runs to 13 pages in the English translation. What is delivered is the complete document in that order: every clause, every table, every figure and every annex of the Chinese original, with the same numbering, so that a reference to a clause number in a contract or a test report points to the same place in both languages.