Also bogy, bogey. [A northern dialect word, which has recently been generally diffused in connection with railways as applied to the plate-layer’s bogie, but especially in sense 2. Of unknown etymology: notwithstanding absurd stories in the newspapers (invented ad rem), it has (as the sense might show) nothing to do with BOGY, which is not a northern word.]
1. north. dial. A low strong truck upon four small wheels, also called trolly, hurly, etc. ‘A kind of cart with low wheels and long shafts, used by masons to remove large stones’ (Peacock, Lonsdale Gloss.); ‘a rude contrivance for moving heavy articles, consisting of a simple plank on low wheels’ (Lanc. Gloss.). esp. in Newcastle, A strong low truck (about 1 ft. high) on 4 small wheels, used, since c. 1817, for transporting a single cask or hogshead from the quay to the town; also a flat board with 4 very small wheels on which lads career down steep banks or roads, as in the Canadian sport of tobogganing. Hence, in general use, the low truck used by plate-layers on a railway.
c. 1817. [Remembered in Newcastle by living witnesses].
1835. A. Gilchrist, in Robson, Bards of Tyne (1863), 416. In Dean Street, when carts or when bogies came down.
1840. T. Wilson, Poems (1872), 93. A kind o’ hearse on bogie wheels.
1869. N. & Q., Ser. IV. IV. 570/1. In Scotland in the engineering works they have a small carriage … which they call a ‘bogie.’… I find it has been known by that name for fully 60 years.
1874. Trans. Amer. Inst. Mining Eng., II. 82. The slag may be allowed to deposit itself in layers in the truck or bogie, placed underneath the rolls.
1885. Birmingham Wkly. Post, 26 Sept., 4/7. This work has often had to be done with a plate-layer’s bogie, propelled by feet touching the road. (See R. Oliver Heslop, in Newcastle Daily Journal, 1 Nov. 1886.)
2. A low truck or frame running on two or more pairs of wheels and supporting the fore-part of a locomotive engine or the ends of a long railway-carriage, to which it is attached by a central pivot, on which it swivels freely in passing curves; a revolving under-carriage.
1844. Specif. J. Wright’s Patent, No. 10173. Constructing railway carriages by supporting the bodies near the ends on two eight-wheel, six-wheel, and four-wheel bogies or revolving under-carriages.
1865. Railway News, 2 Dec., 579. The Bissell Bogie … for Locomotive Engines, so much prized on American and foreign Railroads.
1878. F. Williams, Midl. Railw., 665. The new Midland passenger carriages … rest on two six-wheeled bogies.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., XI. 307. In some engines the front part, instead of being mounted on a single pair of wheels, is supported on a ‘bogie’ or truck with two pairs.
3. attrib., as in bogie car, carriage, engine, truck; bogie-barrow = sense 1 (‘known in Fife for sixty years or more,’ Prof. W. Wallace).
1843. Proc. Inst. Civil Eng., 99. What is termed a ‘bogie’ engine, having a four-wheeled truck to support one end of the boiler, whilst the other end rests upon the driving wheels.
1851. Specif. C. Cowper’s Patent, No. 13705. Improvements in the fore carriages, or as they are sometimes called ‘bogy frames,’ of locomotive engines.
1869. Eng. Mech., 19 Nov., 236/1. These engines are constructed with a bogie truck.
1880. Birmingham Wkly. Post, 2 Oct., 1/6. He was in the last compartment of the last bogie carriage.
