Tailies are stowaways who lives in the Tail.
History
Tailies were apparently not an intentional part of Snowpiercer's society. Until the Civil War, they were not considered as passengers and were kept prisoners in the last few cars of the tail section. As such, they did not have any rights. They had no permission to visit other cars except on rare occasions, and when specifically given notarized authorization. According to Andre Layton, most hadn’t seen the sun since first boarding the train seven years before.
Group commitment among Tailies is strong, yet they were often tempted to find some way of entering a higher status group. The original Tailies were the survivors of a desperate group of stowaways who entered Snowpiercer by force of numbers after a violent conflict with the authorized passengers (mainly Jackboots). At some point, an uneasy understanding was reached, and once 400 people strong, the Tail Section had very limited rights and survived on rations given unilaterally by Snowpiercer's management, to considerable distress of all involved. Tailies are easily the most tightly knit of all four social classes aboard Snowpiercer, to the point of often decreeing their commitment to the tail as a whole and feeling duty-bound to the group even after years of distance and sparse contact.
