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I read a sentence in a chapter in my book which was:
A bogey of a train that was returning from Ayodhya and was full of Karsevaks was set on fire.
I didn't find any dictionary describing the word "bogey" in the sense it has been used in here. So I want to know whether it is acceptable to use the word "bogey" as a variant of "bogie"?
The full (subscription-only) Oxford English Dictionary lists bogy and bogey as alternative spellings for bogie (their "low-slung trolley / truck" entry, which is particularly common in rail contexts).
But they have another 4 separate entries for bogey (all with different meanings and etymologies), 3 of which explicitly include bogie as a valid alternative spelling.
In short, there's probably no point in a learners' site trying to lay down the law about "correct" spelling for any given use of these 5 words. Things are of course even further complicated by the fact that many of us would probably pluralise all of them as bogies. Here's a chart showing that although singular bogey is the overall most common spelling (way more so than bogie), the plural bogeys is in fact the least common form.
The two have completely different meanings and it seems "bogie" perfectly describes what you're referring to, so I don't know why you would use "bogey" in place of it.
