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In this paper, novel control strategies are proposed to suppress the sloshing phenomenon in tank wagons. Surface liquid movement can cause additional oscillations in the car body, and consequently, the dynamic stability of the rail car experiences additional problems. Lateral and longitudinal surface movements of liquid are modeled and simulated. In the proposed methodology, part of the liquid is isolated in a tube in order to provide the essential inertia in passive and active vibration absorbers. The performance of different vibration-absorbing systems including the tuned mass damper, delayed resonator and nonlinear energy sink are evaluated in a variety of loading situations. Dynamic stability is measured in terms of Nadal’s criterion and the unloading quotient is determined as an auxiliary index and compared with limiting criteria. It is found that an appropriately designed and installed control system can passively absorb and locally dissipate a major portion of the kinetic energy of the car body, up to an optimal value of 65%.