Abstract: This specification discloses a rail car for carrying hot coke from a coke oven to a quenching station in combination with a control system for automatically controlling the acceleration, deceleration, stopping and starting of the rail car to achieve optimum cycle times having regard to track conditions. The rail car includes a chassis supporting a load container and a plurality of wheeled bogies supporting the chassis and container, at least the forward bogie being directly driven by two electric traction motors and being located at the position of maximum weight of the rail car. The motors provide both acceleration and braking torques for the rail car and are controlled by the control system. The control system includes a slip detection circuit connected to a speed regulator for modifying the regulation applied by the speed regulator to remove wheel slip. The speed regulator is controlled via a ramp generator which dictates the acceleration and deceleration profiles for the motors.