A schnabel car is a type of specialized railway freight car. It is designed for the transportation of heavy and oversized loads; Sometimes the load itself is part of the wagon. The load is suspended at its ends by lifting arms; The lift arms are connected to a pivot above a set of axles and frames that carry the weight of the load and the lift arm.

When a schnabel car is empty, the lifting arms are linked together and it can operate at the normal speed of freight trains. Some schnabel cars have hydraulic devices that allow cargo to be moved vertically and horizontally while in transit (at low speeds) to avoid obstacles along their route. There are 30 wagons of this type operating in Anglo-Saxon America, 31 in Europe, 25 in Asia and 1 in Australia.

The largest schnabel car in operation, owned by ABB and numbered CEBX 800, is in service in North America. It has 36 axles (18 in each half). Each half contains nine boxwoods, which are joined by a complex system of support bridges. It has a tare (empty weight) of 340 Tm and measures 70.61 m long; It can transport loads up to 34.54 m in length. In comparison, a typical closed wagon in use in the ff.cc. of North America has a simple boxcar with two axles at each end and measures 15 to 27 m, with a capacity of 64 to 95 tons. A notable CEBX 800 load was completed in January 2006, transporting a Nexen Inc. and OPTI Canada reactor from Duluth, Minnesota to the Athabasca Oil Sands in northern Alberta. The 678-tonne load was the heaviest ever transported by rail between Edmonton and the Oil Sands.[1]

The word schnabel comes from the German tragschnabelwagen, which means "beaked freight car", because the conical shape of the lifting arms resembles a bird's beak.