@@ellobo1326 Well you can say that with just about everything, including Janney's design which derived from the pin and link system, whereas he tweaked it using a hook interlock design. And I don't have to appropriate anything, because it is what it is. It's you that has appropriated including the country and other land masses and cultures you stole. And furthermore, you cannot patent what has already been patent, so the new and improved design had to be significant otherwise trains today wouldn't be using his design, but ratherJanney's one.
Many I'm sure. I think some equipment overseas still uses a similar design. Any system that requires a person to go between cars, poses a risk to more than just fingers.
@@rjb5847 In Europe we still use classic chain couplers. You have to get between the cars, but not while they are still moving. A lot of people do this anyway because they are lazy and don't want to bend under the buffers. Also for sure you can still bump your head and pinch your fingers.
In the days of link and pin, brakemen carried their résumé with them. That is to say, their hands. If a man had all his digits, he was a greenhorn. If he had one or two missing, he had a little experience. If he had a few missing, he’s been on the job for a while. Anything more, they’d give him a job that didn’t require his hands.
@@jackboerner1901 I worked with a Conductor in the late 1970s & his father had also been a Conductor having started in 1919. Back then, some of the old service cars still had link and pin instead of knuckle couplers. As you're probably aware, some old knuckles had a notch in them, this allowed insertion of a link, then they dropped a pin in the casting hole on the coupler. Apparently some of the old service cars did not even have air brakes, they had a train line attached so they could be placed in between some equipment with operating air brakes if needed on a work train.
I wasn't wearing headphones, but it's 3am and everyone in my house is asleep .. the previous video series I watched was recorded on cellphones and thus was rather quiet so my volume on my laptop was all the way up. Both my dogs barked when they heard the crash!
Early in my railroading career, I used to see the notched knuckles on some old work equipment. Another long gone item are the pole pockets on engines & cars.
In 1925, Japan ( JNR) converted its entire Rolling stock fleet from hook and link system to MCB Janney couplers in one or two days. The USSR also developed an auto coupler which has fixed jaws, and a wedge lock system; it is now standard throughout Europe, although only on Block Trains; most of the older stock is still side buffer with central hook and threaded link. EMUs and DMUs have a German Male/Female coned coupler, which includes electric and air brake lines.
It was nice to learn about the link and pin couplers. They were the most unsafe apparatus ever invented and that led to danger on the railroad workers.
Yep I heard that from old time railroaders too. Add to that misery the fact that before the 1870's, trains had no air brakes! Those same Brakemen rode the tops of cars, in any weather, and had to turn brake wheels on each car to actually stop the train. Imagine how tough those guys had to be!
@aknoob100 and to think that there are people today who think that all modern technology is bad and we should go back to the way things were a long time ago.
Knuckle coupler for the win! I've coupled cars here in Europe with the buffer and chain system. So for example, a locomotive is moving towards the cars slowly, the buffers touch, you crawl under the buffers and you must take the oval shaped ring and throw it on the hook and you have a screw to tighten it. Then you take your brake pipes, join them and open the valves. But in USA when decoupling I see for the brake pipes that you just close the valves and the hoses automatically split apart when you drive away. Here you close the valves and manually undo the hoses or else you're gonna rip them off. Another thing where I worked is that the track was level (no grade), so handbrakes on cars were not set. The independent brakes were set to hold the cars as long as the air didn't leak out. But the next day you come to pick up cars, the air has leaked out and when you need to couple the locomotive to them, the buffers touch and the cars just roll away. So, the DANGEROUS part comes! In this scenario, you stand in the track near the car that is stationary and wait for the the slow moving locomotive to come closer, just before buffers touch you grab the locomotives oval ring and throw it on the cars hook. Yes, it's a rule that you always use the oval ring from locomotive and throw it on the first car, between cars it doesn't matter how you couple them. Nobody ever bothered to apply handbrakes, safety was under question, glad I left that job.
yup and Europe was slow to adopt the Knuckle recently they have replaced their link and pin and chains couplings with knuckles but some cars have been replaced by the screw hook which is an improved version of the link and pin and chain coupling.
In Austria we use Hook Couplers. So each car has a hock and atleast 1 has a chain that just have to be put onto the hook. This actually leaves room for buffers on the train which I think is a bit safer because even if someone is between the cars to couple them toghether the buffers of the wagons will stop the rolling wagons and leave enough space for the Person to stay safe inbetween.
wikipedia: "The term Buckeye comes from the nickname of the US state of Ohio, the "Buckeye state" and the Ohio Brass Company which originally marketed the coupling."
The NYC transit system had some elevated trains which still used their original link and pin couplers in regular service into the 1960's. The cars were also the last wooden rapid transit equipment to operate anywhere in North America. They were finally retired in October 1969. The first steel subway cars also had link and pin couplers which were replaced by 1910.
murray1575 Actually the couplers used on elevated trains was a Van Dorn, not a link and pin, although it utilized a link and a pin arrangement. They were in common use on rapid transit, interurban, and street railways throughout the US and Canada. Van Dorns could be coupled without a man holding the link, which was an elongated S with an a hole in the center. A large pin through the center held it in place, the hook at the end engaged a smaller pin in the other coupler, which was removed to uncouple. A small pin was also inserted after coupling to hold the hook at the other end of the link to lock it in place and prevent the cars from uncoupling. You can still see Van Dorns in use at trolley museums. In later years, heavier subway cars were equipped with Tomlinson couplers.
There are a few narrow gage logging lines on the Ukrainian / Hungarian / Romanian boarder that still use link and pin system. Sugar cane railways in Australia also use link and pin.
@@TheLpbrennan I don’t know what they are called, but the 4000 series elevated cars in Chicago and some other cars had a unique form of automatic coupler that could have the ‘knuckle’ piece removed to accept a link from a Van Dorn coupler. I think some early New York cars used it as well.
I recall reading that another issue with them was that the slack action could yank air or vacuum break hoses and steam lines apart, hastening their replacement.
also you can add George Westinghouse and his team at Wabtec if it was not for them we would still have accidents. Wabtec invented the brakes and compared to the knuckle that is the greatest invention in railroad safety.
Since this video has been posted many of you have made great comments and asked several questions. My apologies for not responding before this - no excuses or reasons other than "life." Regardless, I have asked our experts (not me) at the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum to respond, and you will find their comments after this. I would highly encourage you to look at all our videos on our TH-cam channel at th-cam.com/channels/YGqtAz-gvs4ZoK75G_DCTA.html and comment there. Impact speed: One of the most frequent comments involves the speed of the cars at impact (the opening seconds of the video). This is stock footage we used because we wanted to get people’s attention with a coupling scene right away (I guess we succeeded). We had not thought through the safety aspects, but the viewers’ comments are enlightening. We never noticed the dust flying until it was pointed out. This does raise a question we would like to pose to everyone; does anyone have an idea how long a typical knuckle lasts? We know they break/wear down (the impact speed so many people commented on offers one explanation for it) but we just do not know how often they need replacement. And by the way, this same footage was used on Jeopardy! a while ago (Answer: He invented this coupler; Question: Who was Eli Janney?). Terminology: Several viewers mentioned Buckeye couplers. Our understanding is that the Buckeye coupler was a “Janney style” coupler manufactured to industry specs by a company in - surprise - Ohio. We do not think the company began manufacturing couplers until the late 1880s or early 1890s as the rail industry was moving closer to a more standardized design. McConway & Torley of Pittsburgh secured an exclusive license from Janney for his invention in the late 1870s, well before the Ohio company came into existence. With that, they were the sole producers of “Janney couplers.” They quickly began patenting their own derivations and marketed them as “Janney-style” couplers to avoid patent battles or royalty payment issues with Janney. Unfortunately, a flood in the 1930s wiped out a good portion of the company’s old records but company folklore has it that Janney’s license was for a flat fee of just $300. McConway & Torley still is one of the largest producers of AAR knuckle couplers and the term Janney-style coupler” seems to have become a generic term much the way Coke, Xerox and Kleenex have. And in a sign of the times, the neighborhood around the foundry has gentrified over the years causing some tension. Forged versus cast: Good question and something we have wondered about (one of those considerably basic questions that is pretty important but for which an answer has eluded us so far). We seriously doubt if expensive production methods were used for early pins/links (the drawbars might be a different story). The quality of the iron for some of the links/pins we have in our collection is very poor. One of the later steel versions is much more robust. Never having worked in a foundry it would be kind of neat for someone with production experience to take a look at the ones we have If you are ever in our area! (Seams are visible on some of our pins.) Theft: This apparently was a big problem. We once read that the Pennsylvania RR lost about $50,000 worth of coupler links & pins. A top-of-the-line Baldwin locomotive would have gone for about $17,000 during the same period. So, we are not sure what we read about the Pennsylvania RR loss is accurate. Start and finish dates for the link and pin coupler: As far as we know, the link & pin carried over from wagons and carriages from the beginning of U.S. railroads, so that would be the start date. As one viewer noted, they are still used very selectively in operations that were excluded from compliance requirements in the 1893 Safety Appliance Act. Some railroad had been using a semi-automatic coupler - the Miller hook coupler - for passenger cars many years before the Safety Appliance Act but they were not sufficiently robust to handle the demands of freight cars. The Pennsylvania RR began using Janney couplers on freight and passenger cars well before the 1893 act. McConway & Torley was one of its major suppliers and it was good public relations fodder for the company with its passenger audiences (much the same way that airbags were touted by car companies to potential buyers before they were required by law). I think the lack of standardization was a major obstacle in more widespread use prior to the 1893 act. As far as we can tell, the Washington Division of the Richmond & Danville RR (most of which was the former Orange & Alexandria RR that our station was built to service) used link & pin couplers exclusively. It was not until it was reorganized as Southern Railway in 1893/4 (and Congress passed the Safety Appliance Act) that a retrofit program was implemented for passenger and freight cars along that line (early Southern Railway annual reports include line items for coupler expenses). And from what we understand there are link & pin couplers in use today in Europe but they are far more robust and safer for rail users and workers alike. Competing couplers: There were references by a number of people to alternatives to the link & pin coupler. There were hundreds of patents awarded to new couplers over decades but none of them proved practical. Most were variations on the basic link & pin design and while they might have offered marginal safety improvements for workers, the problem remained that the pins and links were just insufficient in handling heavy loads and could not provide stability for freight cars (especially on the generally poor quality of U.S. roadbeds at the time). Companies just had no incentive to spend the money needed to introduce changes that might produce only marginal benefits. How do you couple a freight car? (answer: very carefully; ha-ha): A number of folks speculated on how to safely connect freight cars using a link & pin. We have been told about brakemen who used rail pullers and other long tools to support the link while using their free hand to drop the pin. However, we have not read anything in rail journals of the period that has shed any light on those possibilities. Standards: We know that couplers were standardized for both the U.S. and Canada but we don’t know when that happened in Canada. Company folks we interviewed emphasized that the biggest advantage of the coupler was standardization (which the 1893 act also set down as a requirement). Additional videos: Thanks for all the suggestions! There is always something to learn. We especially appreciate the air brake suggestion. The fact that to this day they still need to be connected manually is the reason that couplers are still called “semi-automatic” (or so “Trains” magazine tells us). Again, thanks to everyone for their inputs. Keep it coming!
In Poland (Europe) we use chain system, which is pretty safe, because you're linking cars when they are stopped. I always wondered how american coupling can works till yesterday, they're interesting as they don't need anyone for them to clutch.
I'm pretty sure those old links and pins weren't just cast, they were forged (squished under high heat and pressure to push the atoms closer together) to make them stronger.
I was wondering if some of these Jenny couplers have a heavy buffer spring behind them inside their slack box? A lot of people think American couplers should break in no time with how they jar into each other at very low speeds. I am convinced there is a very heavy spring behind each coupler assembly acting as a shock absorber.
There were many thousands of railroad workers killed in the performance of their jobs. Workers cost nothing, but safety improvements ate into profits. The Janney coupler (developed by a Confederate Veteran) saved many lives. Prior to this, workers were hired who were often missing fingers, as this was considered a measure of experience. The Janney coupler won a competition with several other designs. It took decades AFTER the federal government mandated that railroad use the Westinghouse Air Brake system and the Janney coupler for them to be adopted.
Thanks for your comments. Here are some thoughts on those from our Museum volunteers - RR workers certainly faced a number of life-threatening dangers in their work. Worker safety was a major political issue (as our videos point out), to the point that it was addressed in presidential candidates’ speeches. A lack of industry concern and treating workers as if they were expendable was often cited as contributing to those dangers. - As an industry, railroad companies did take their time in adopting couplers, due in part to retrofit costs and the possibility of paying royalties to Janney or others. Early evaluations by the Master Car Builders Assn concluded that “survival of the fittest” was the only means available for selecting a practical design. That does make one wonder whether the association was really committed to resolving the matter. - MCBA eventually moved toward “Janney style” couplers. However, McConway & Torley (one of the Pa RR’s biggest suppliers) had already licensed Janney’s patent as this process evolved. The MCBA forced Janney and McConway & Torley to relinquish their rights to certain aspects of their patents so coupler production would not be monopolized by a single firm. Even then, developing technical specifications for a usable coupler took considerable time. We can’t really say how much of this was due to the technical challenges, industry stalling or just association bureaucracy. - Some companies, notably the Pennsylvania RR, sought a competitive advantage in early adoption and deployment of “Janney style” couplers. Air brakes also were being deployed before the congressional mandate. Their safety became a marketing pitch for the Pennsylvania RR and B&O RR. The Pa RR was aided by McConway & Torley’s early access to and involvement in the Janney coupler. (The company is still one of the largest producers of such couplers in the U.S.) - Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable numbers for the degree to which air brakes and new couplers were used across the industry prior to the 1893 legislation. Locally (as in Fairfax Station), all the freight and passenger trains that ran along the Washington Division (the former O&A route) had air brakes by the late 1880s, well before the 1893 federal legislation (or so a Richmond & Danville RR representative stated in court depositions at the time). Southern Rwy - the R&D’s successor - did not adopt semi-automatic couplers until Congress passed the 1893 legislation. - In our view, the 1893 legislation assured that an emerging trend became a universal requirement. Even then, the process was slow. There were several amendments to the act in the decades ahead, including extension of the mandate (1893 was the beginning of a global recession that seriously affected railroads.) And as we’ve discussed in the past, the most important aspect of the legislation might have been the requirement for standardization. Common equipment meant improved safety for workers but also major efficiency improvements for the industry. - Janney’s Civil War service record has little to do with the coupler, of course, but it is an interesting detail for a person who remains something of a mystery. We think he was a quartermaster on Lee’s staff and was well behind the lines. Apparently he was quite proud of his service record in general and his association with Lee in particular, naming one of his sons after him and serving on various boards that organized commemorative events for Confederate veterans. We are all far from being industrial historians but we see some parallels between railroads’ adoption of safety appliances and the auto industry’s adoption of passive restraints. Both industries showed reluctance to adopt them in part because of costs, licensing considerations, risk aversion and so on, but their deployment began in response to market demands before federal legislation required them. Federal legislation did push standardization/commonality which benefited everybody concerned. And now we take them for granted. And finally, a plug for the museum is required! It is the details and nuances of these very complex events that makes history alive. I would encourage anyone reading this to come visit us so we can show off our recently acquired link and pin coupler. It came to us by way of John Sterling in the Chicago suburbs, whose father was a brakeman and kept all ten fingers intact until his last days.
Thanks for the video...I had heard that the inventor didn't work for the railroad, but didn't know about the safety laws that were passed to protect the brakemen. *Now,* do a video on the air system and show how THAT coupler can hold big pressures YET be pulled apart *without damage* when cars are separated. Research as I might, I can find no examples or pictures on Google or Wikipedia!
Ben Lundquist Those hose ends get pulled off all the time. Locomotives have a box somewhere on them with some spare knuckle pins, trainline and locomotive M.U. Hoses and some wrenches to change them with. They also carry spare knuckles on the locomotives.
@@mattybice09 Somebody was, but I can’t take credit for it. All I can do is keep changing broken hoses and hanging new spare knuckles in their storage racks.
On the link and pin, the operator is suppose to use a baton to lift the link up for alignment. We can all figure how many times people in the real world just used their hand to damaging results.
As with most workplace safety this is more of the employers excuse then a practical reality, the provided equipment, training, work load etc end up dictating what really happens and we know American businesses consistently show disdain for worker safety.
Coupling at the beginning is WAY too fast. Per GCOR rule 7.4: "Make couplings at a speed of not more than 4 MPH. Stretch the slack to ensure that all couplings are made." Like they say, "Four miles per hour is a coupling, five miles per hour is a collision."
KNUCKLE OR BUCKEYE COUPLERS ! The American "Knuckle" (or Janney) semi automatic rigid coupler was invented in 1873, with detailed improvements up to 1882. It was also taken by "Mr. Pullman" to Britain in 1888, but it's introduction across Britain was slow, and did not become a "Carriage coupling" standard until after 1948. The British version of this coupling is also slightly smaller than its U.S counterpart. Further in Europe due to the existence of Buffers and "chain" type couplings on most vehicles. Means the British Buckeye, also has to have a mechanism to lower the "Buckeye" out of the way, to reveal a standard coupling hook behind. As the Buckeye was never adopted in mainland Europe.
The RR industry in the United States doesn't use the "Janney" design anymore but a better design patterned by Andrew Jackson Beard, who introduced two improvements to his design in 1897 and 1899.
I would have used and kept with me a thin steel bar to hold the link, instead of my fingers. Plus it could double as a weapon should you run into any shady characters.
The brake men were provided with pieces of wood, but in general they considered then to be clumsy and useless, and went right back to using (and losing) their hands. Incidentally, the railroad decided to switch to knuckle type connectors mostly because the links and pins kept disappearing from trains and reappearing in scrap yards, much less so than because their brake men kept losing fingers.
nanderv well to an extent. Almost all actually passenger transport in Europe is carried out by fixed trainsets, so it's a bit of a non-issue. There were many railways that deviated from chains to, even in the 1920s the standard LNER carridges coupling was a knuckle coupler.
Well there's DAC4EU project running. Likely will be a Scharfenbergtype winning. The SA3 alike one was withdrawn early on. Doubt the Swab-Type as a chance as Switzerland has already started using Scharfenberg on Cargotrains.
a similar design coupler was copied and applied in the Soviet Union in the 1940's during the lend lease program a hand full of ALCO RSC-1 locomotives bound for Iran were interned to the USSR for the war effort. The Former Soviet block countries are about the only countries still using the U.S. Copies of the standard couplers used today while Western Europe still uses a mix of coupling systems including link and pin.
RENFEMikado Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia also use the same same coupling system as Russia. It might also be used in Romania, Hungary, slovika and Poland in limited use considering that the Ukranian state railways links up with there networks.
RENFEMikado after the ussr fell Ukraine narrowed there track track down by 1 1/2 to 2 inches across most of there system and started to change trucks out under there cars and locomotives with adjustable axles similar to the MRS-1's locomotives built for the US army in the 1950's.
RENFEMikado the adjustable axles in Ukraine became a solution to speeding up an interchange point at the Polish border. Apparently this connection gives Ukraine a rail port to transfer coal or grain to ships on the Baltic Sea. There is a guy here in the U.S. that makes H.O. Scale Russian locomotives he's done the TEM series (Alco) copies and other Russian units. Not sure if he's active or not but his company is called Red Star Railways I think? If you get an MRS-1 made you going for the ALCO or the EMD production one?
RENFEMikado wish I could help you there my grandfather worked for Alco in there diesel engine shop in Auburn, New York. I have the last production book from the Auburn plant that reports where the last of the diesel engines are world wide.
I have an explanation of how the Janny coupler works. This might not be true. Reply if this is not how it works. So, two knuckles close in on each other. Eventually, a bar in the middle of one coupler slides through a hole in the knuckle, locking it in place. The other knuckle is held by the lack of space between the coupler’s fixed piece and the other coupler.
I believe you are correct. The original Janney patent included a pin but I believe as the industry developed standards the locking mechanism evolved into a more robust mechanical part.If you send me an email address (mine is blamond@fairfax-station.org) I can send you copies of the Janney patent and a more recent industry standard drawing for passenger car couplers. Thanks!
Funny thing was back then, the theft of the pins and links was a ridiculous problem of great magnitude. The railroads regularly went around retrieving them from junkyards. They tried to come up with ways to affix the things to cars to mitigate this problem. There were also several variations of the simple concept here. One was a dual-link side loader to keep hands out of the ends. Also, there were many many other types of semi-automatic couplers trying to gain acceptance at the trials held by the ICC, and they were almost all total failures. The Janney was the only one that worked well enough, so the gov't simply ordered everyone to use the Janney. The Burlington brake trials were similar, and there were more than one. The eventual winner of that one, Westinghouse, even failed the first trial, and they had to go back and try again at the next trial, with the triple valve solving the problem they had. Actually, the passenger cars of the day were allowed to have a different coupler, called the "Miller" that worked really well, but I think it had to have a special platform with it, so it ended up the passenger car was the only type of car that could accept it due to whatever limitations it had.
I bought books years ago because railroad signaling and appliances are a keen interest of mine. "The Search for Safety" about mostly railroad signaling comes to mind. I think it was put out by Union Switch and Signal. It is possible quite a bit of my info came from this book, but I am not sure, since it dealt with signaling. . I read it over 30 years ago, and there are other fine books out there also. I really, really, wish I remember which book had all this info. I think everything I quoted above came from this one book. A list of all the pre-Janney stuff, and there were dozens of coupler examples, even semi-automatic link-pin arrangements! All kinds of semi-auto couplers. (Janney is actually this, after all, too. There is still manual stuff to do during and before lock-up) Some were ridiculous, and wouldn't function in a radius track, or would dis-connect in a turn. Some might work under factory conditions, but never in reality. The "turnip" was a ridiculous complicated contraption that probably would work until dirty or slightly worn, or as long as torsion or tension was "just so". Janney proved that the simple solution is the best one. Vertical plane, to allow for up-and-down motion was a big key to its success. The shortcoming of the Miller, I think, was it had to be restrained in a large end-sill or platform found only on passenger cars. It must have been good, or maybe in some ways better than Janney, or it never would have been allowed as an exception to Janney. Eventually, passenger cars were converted over to Janney types. Miller may have existed before Janney. For years, inventors worked on the coupler issue. They knew the need was great, but uniformity was essential, and back then railroads were anything but "uniform"! I will try and remember this book source, and I will re-visit and let you know what it was.
Sure can! madmaxmcgyver@yahoo.com. I will write back with my phone number! Definitely call me back! Only way to fly!! Post me right here to remind me when you write so I remember to check my email! I'm bad about that!
Brandon Velasco I’d have no idea I’m afraid. Depending on where you live you can visit a (large) railroad museum and ask. The museum I volunteer at doesn’t have access to those sorts of items.
Probably a combination of expense and lighter, shorter trains. The Janney/MCB coupler is capable of handling the enormous loads of American freight trains. That, added to the use of Westinghouse's triple-valve air brake, is what allowed the size difference between American cars and train lengths, simply not possible with the screw-link coupler in wide use in Europe. In the UK, for instance, freight trains -- goods trains, to them -- were .loose-coupled and without continuous brakes into recent years, braking being done by the guard's van, more or less equivalent to the caboose. The guard's van had brakes.
Presently used in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, South and North Korea. The similar SA3 coupler is used throughout eastern Europe.
Robert Lamond Jr...'here in the US' Neat history lesson but I often wonder...when do 'mericans finally realize these are NA standards applicable in 2 countries?
Normally this will not damage couplers, locomotives and cars (actually as we know this happens all time in hump yard). but the impact may cause cargo or passengers in cars damaged or injured. An emergency stop on an autocar train, may cause cars in the same car has chain collision, damage both cars and autocar. Just only from gaps between couplers can cause such damage on cargo, a hard hit when coupling cars can produce much stronger impact.This is why Union Pacific make videos to tell their box car and container customers how to place their cargo and use air bag to prevent damage. So even in train sim, I do my best to couple cars softly (stop several fts before hit, then move train with notch 1).
I work on a shortline, and what really makes the difference between a gentle coupling and damaging equipment and product is good communication between the conductor/brakeman and engineer. Although sometimes the coupler pins don't fall, so sometimes you either manually close one knuckle and open another, or you just have the engineer give it a good bump. Now when both knuckles are closed or misaligned so that they butt and close without coupling, that's really when damage can be done. It's also loud as hell when it happens too.
i saw a whole rusted coupler box get pushed in once- totaled the car it was attached to. better they found out in the yard than going up a hill in the middle of a mile long consist.
Wow, I applaud you in your under 30 second response. But believe me we do. Personality and enthusiasm about a particular subject is infinitely more inspiring to the viewer than ones complexion.
justandy333 Hah! It’s the old wrinkled skin that would scare most! We are a non-professional group, but always trying to improve! Please check out the other videos we have at the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum website via the TH-cam link at the bottom of the page. www.fairfax-station.org
First 5 seconds... what in the hell is that? You’re coupling not welding, if you can see the dust flying you’re doing it wrong... if you’re good at coupling you’ll tell them to stop soon enough that the only noise you hear is the one or both pins falling
The modern coupler is truly an intelligent design. Janney was a smart man.
There was a smarter man, which Janney's design was replaced by Andrew Jackson Beard which hooks up automatically without setting the pin.
@@brazillo19 Not so. It’s easy to take a concept already developed by someone else and tweak it. Good try at appropriation you made though. 👍
@@ellobo1326 Well you can say that with just about everything, including Janney's design which derived from the pin and link system, whereas he tweaked it using a hook interlock design. And I don't have to appropriate anything, because it is what it is. It's you that has appropriated including the country and other land masses and cultures you stole. And furthermore, you cannot patent what has already been patent, so the new and improved design had to be significant otherwise trains today wouldn't be using his design, but ratherJanney's one.
The link & pin system looks brutal... I can't even imagine how many hands have been crushed over the years.
Many I'm sure. I think some equipment overseas still uses a similar design. Any system that requires a person to go between cars, poses a risk to more than just fingers.
@@rjb5847 In Europe we still use classic chain couplers. You have to get between the cars, but not while they are still moving. A lot of people do this anyway because they are lazy and don't want to bend under the buffers. Also for sure you can still bump your head and pinch your fingers.
In the days of link and pin, brakemen carried their résumé with them. That is to say, their hands. If a man had all his digits, he was a greenhorn. If he had one or two missing, he had a little experience. If he had a few missing, he’s been on the job for a while. Anything more, they’d give him a job that didn’t require his hands.
@@jackboerner1901 I worked with a Conductor in the late 1970s & his father had also been a Conductor having started in 1919. Back then, some of the old service cars still had link and pin instead of knuckle couplers. As you're probably aware, some old knuckles had a notch in them, this allowed insertion of a link, then they dropped a pin in the casting hole on the coupler. Apparently some of the old service cars did not even have air brakes, they had a train line attached so they could be placed in between some equipment with operating air brakes if needed on a work train.
@@rjb5847 an interesting fact is that when knuckle couplers are used in Europe, they frequently still have that notch for drawbars and chains.
Never thought I'd find such interest in rail road couplers.
If you don't have any interest in railroads at all, that seems obvious.
Agreed! Anything can be interesting if someone explains it well enough.
@@MartinOmander You wrote the right thing.
We used to say it was so quiet in the railyards that you could hear a pin drop.
0:02 Ouch, I was wearing headphones....
Lol, SAME!!!
me too
I wasn't wearing headphones, but it's 3am and everyone in my house is asleep .. the previous video series I watched was recorded on cellphones and thus was rather quiet so my volume on my laptop was all the way up. Both my dogs barked when they heard the crash!
@@DieCastoms f
@@DieCastoms oof, I feel for you.
Early in my railroading career, I used to see the notched knuckles on some old work equipment. Another long gone item are the pole pockets on engines & cars.
Those pole pockets seemed to be perpetuated for a very long time after the practice was abandoned.
Excellent vid. Clear, straightforward, informative and well composed. Many thanks.
You are welcome!
The knuckle couplers are used here in Australia as well as USA & Canada.
In 1925, Japan ( JNR) converted its entire Rolling stock fleet from hook and link system to MCB Janney couplers in one or two days.
The USSR also developed an auto coupler which has fixed jaws, and a wedge lock system; it is now standard throughout Europe, although only on Block Trains; most of the older stock is still side buffer with central hook and threaded link.
EMUs and DMUs have a German Male/Female coned coupler, which includes electric and air brake lines.
It was nice to learn about the link and pin couplers. They were the most unsafe apparatus ever invented and that led to danger on the railroad workers.
They used to say you could tell how long a brakeman had worked on the railroad by how many fingers he had left.
Norman Morgan Did nobody ever think to hold the link up with a piece of wood or something instead of their hand?
Yes, they were supposed to, but it was difficult, and many did it by hand instead.
Yep I heard that from old time railroaders too. Add to that misery the fact that before the 1870's, trains had no air brakes! Those same Brakemen rode the tops of cars, in any weather, and had to turn brake wheels on each car to actually stop the train. Imagine how tough those guys had to be!
@aknoob100 and to think that there are people today who think that all modern technology is bad and we should go back to the way things were a long time ago.
@@appleintosh Most of them were *stupid* like lots of people these daze...
Knuckle coupler for the win!
I've coupled cars here in Europe with the buffer and chain system.
So for example, a locomotive is moving towards the cars slowly, the buffers touch, you crawl under the buffers and you must take the oval shaped ring and throw it on the hook and you have a screw to tighten it. Then you take your brake pipes, join them and open the valves.
But in USA when decoupling I see for the brake pipes that you just close the valves and the hoses automatically split apart when you drive away.
Here you close the valves and manually undo the hoses or else you're gonna rip them off.
Another thing where I worked is that the track was level (no grade), so handbrakes on cars were not set. The independent brakes were set to hold the cars as long as the air didn't leak out. But the next day you come to pick up cars, the air has leaked out and when you need to couple the locomotive to them, the buffers touch and the cars just roll away. So, the DANGEROUS part comes! In this scenario, you stand in the track near the car that is stationary and wait for the the slow moving locomotive to come closer, just before buffers touch you grab the locomotives oval ring and throw it on the cars hook.
Yes, it's a rule that you always use the oval ring from locomotive and throw it on the first car, between cars it doesn't matter how you couple them.
Nobody ever bothered to apply handbrakes, safety was under question, glad I left that job.
Triplex5014 Thanks for that information!
yup and Europe was slow to adopt the Knuckle recently they have replaced their link and pin and chains couplings with knuckles but some cars have been replaced by the screw hook which is an improved version of the link and pin and chain coupling.
Excellent explanation and those numbers to reveal how safety standards actually benefit everyone!
In Austria we use Hook Couplers. So each car has a hock and atleast 1 has a chain that just have to be put onto the hook. This actually leaves room for buffers on the train which I think is a bit safer because even if someone is between the cars to couple them toghether the buffers of the wagons will stop the rolling wagons and leave enough space for the Person to stay safe inbetween.
Thank you for the post, I was a Switcher / Shunter here in England, and we called the couplers " Buckeyes ", don't know why though.
wikipedia: "The term Buckeye comes from the nickname of the US state of Ohio, the "Buckeye state" and the Ohio Brass Company which originally marketed the coupling."
@@jeffragar3493 Thanks Jeff, your information has been very informative, cheers Chris from Cornwall.
0:02 That's how you break a coupler and break a neck.
The NYC transit system had some elevated trains which still used their original link and pin couplers in regular service into the 1960's. The cars were also the last wooden rapid transit equipment to operate anywhere in North America. They were finally retired in October 1969. The first steel subway cars also had link and pin couplers which were replaced by 1910.
murray1575 Actually the couplers used on elevated trains was a Van Dorn, not a link and pin, although it utilized a link and a pin arrangement. They were in common use on rapid transit, interurban, and street railways throughout the US and Canada. Van Dorns could be coupled without a man holding the link, which was an elongated S with an a hole in the center. A large pin through the center held it in place, the hook at the end engaged a smaller pin in the other coupler, which was removed to uncouple. A small pin was also inserted after coupling to hold the hook at the other end of the link to lock it in place and prevent the cars from uncoupling. You can still see Van Dorns in use at trolley museums. In later years, heavier subway cars were equipped with Tomlinson couplers.
There are a few narrow gage logging lines on the Ukrainian / Hungarian / Romanian boarder that still use link and pin system. Sugar cane railways in Australia also use link and pin.
That is very interesting.
@@TheLpbrennan I don’t know what they are called, but the 4000 series elevated cars in Chicago and some other cars had a unique form of automatic coupler that could have the ‘knuckle’ piece removed to accept a link from a Van Dorn coupler. I think some early New York cars used it as well.
Very awesome video! I'd read about them before but never actually seen one being used. This was great! Thank you for sharing!
Although slowly being phased out for automatic couplers, New Zealand still uses hook and pin.
0:02 made me jump a little even though I knew it was coming
I recall reading that another issue with them was that the slack action could yank air or vacuum break hoses and steam lines apart, hastening their replacement.
The first one was a 10 mph or more coupling
Fantastic well done great lesson
Thanks, Bob!
Great video thank you for posting. Well done.
Besides Janney, the other hero in this story is a man named Coffin. He lobbied tirelessly to get the Janney coupler adopted.
also you can add George Westinghouse and his team at Wabtec if it was not for them we would still have accidents. Wabtec invented the brakes and compared to the knuckle that is the greatest invention in railroad safety.
Don't forget Andrew Jackson Beard, whose coupler design is used on all American railroads today.
Since this video has been posted many of you have made great comments and asked several questions. My apologies for not responding before this - no excuses or reasons other than "life." Regardless, I have asked our experts (not me) at the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum to respond, and you will find their comments after this. I would highly encourage you to look at all our videos on our TH-cam channel at th-cam.com/channels/YGqtAz-gvs4ZoK75G_DCTA.html and comment there.
Impact speed: One of the most frequent comments involves the speed of the cars at impact (the opening seconds of the video). This is stock footage we used because we wanted to get people’s attention with a coupling scene right away (I guess we succeeded). We had not thought through the safety aspects, but the viewers’ comments are enlightening. We never noticed the dust flying until it was pointed out.
This does raise a question we would like to pose to everyone; does anyone have an idea how long a typical knuckle lasts? We know they break/wear down (the impact speed so many people commented on offers one explanation for it) but we just do not know how often they need replacement.
And by the way, this same footage was used on Jeopardy! a while ago (Answer: He invented this coupler; Question: Who was Eli Janney?).
Terminology: Several viewers mentioned Buckeye couplers. Our understanding is that the Buckeye coupler was a “Janney style” coupler manufactured to industry specs by a company in - surprise - Ohio. We do not think the company began manufacturing couplers until the late 1880s or early 1890s as the rail industry was moving closer to a more standardized design.
McConway & Torley of Pittsburgh secured an exclusive license from Janney for his invention in the late 1870s, well before the Ohio company came into existence. With that, they were the sole producers of “Janney couplers.” They quickly began patenting their own derivations and marketed them as “Janney-style” couplers to avoid patent battles or royalty payment issues with Janney. Unfortunately, a flood in the 1930s wiped out a good portion of the company’s old records but company folklore has it that Janney’s license was for a flat fee of just $300. McConway & Torley still is one of the largest producers of AAR knuckle couplers and the term Janney-style coupler” seems to have become a generic term much the way Coke, Xerox and Kleenex have. And in a sign of the times, the neighborhood around the foundry has gentrified over the years causing some tension.
Forged versus cast: Good question and something we have wondered about (one of those considerably basic questions that is pretty important but for which an answer has eluded us so far). We seriously doubt if expensive production methods were used for early pins/links (the drawbars might be a different story). The quality of the iron for some of the links/pins we have in our collection is very poor. One of the later steel versions is much more robust. Never having worked in a foundry it would be kind of neat for someone with production experience to take a look at the ones we have If you are ever in our area! (Seams are visible on some of our pins.)
Theft: This apparently was a big problem. We once read that the Pennsylvania RR lost about $50,000 worth of coupler links & pins. A top-of-the-line Baldwin locomotive would have gone for about $17,000 during the same period. So, we are not sure what we read about the Pennsylvania RR loss is accurate.
Start and finish dates for the link and pin coupler: As far as we know, the link & pin carried over from wagons and carriages from the beginning of U.S. railroads, so that would be the start date. As one viewer noted, they are still used very selectively in operations that were excluded from compliance requirements in the 1893 Safety Appliance Act. Some railroad had been using a semi-automatic coupler - the Miller hook coupler - for passenger cars many years before the Safety Appliance Act but they were not sufficiently robust to handle the demands of freight cars.
The Pennsylvania RR began using Janney couplers on freight and passenger cars well before the 1893 act. McConway & Torley was one of its major suppliers and it was good public relations fodder for the company with its passenger audiences (much the same way that airbags were touted by car companies to potential buyers before they were required by law). I think the lack of standardization was a major obstacle in more widespread use prior to the 1893 act. As far as we can tell, the Washington Division of the Richmond & Danville RR (most of which was the former Orange & Alexandria RR that our station was built to service) used link & pin couplers exclusively. It was not until it was reorganized as Southern Railway in 1893/4 (and Congress passed the Safety Appliance Act) that a retrofit program was implemented for passenger and freight cars along that line (early Southern Railway annual reports include line items for coupler expenses).
And from what we understand there are link & pin couplers in use today in Europe but they are far more robust and safer for rail users and workers alike.
Competing couplers: There were references by a number of people to alternatives to the link & pin coupler. There were hundreds of patents awarded to new couplers over decades but none of them proved practical. Most were variations on the basic link & pin design and while they might have offered marginal safety improvements for workers, the problem remained that the pins and links were just insufficient in handling heavy loads and could not provide stability for freight cars (especially on the generally poor quality of U.S. roadbeds at the time). Companies just had no incentive to spend the money needed to introduce changes that might produce only marginal benefits.
How do you couple a freight car? (answer: very carefully; ha-ha): A number of folks speculated on how to safely connect freight cars using a link & pin. We have been told about brakemen who used rail pullers and other long tools to support the link while using their free hand to drop the pin. However, we have not read anything in rail journals of the period that has shed any light on those possibilities.
Standards: We know that couplers were standardized for both the U.S. and Canada but we don’t know when that happened in Canada. Company folks we interviewed emphasized that the biggest advantage of the coupler was standardization (which the 1893 act also set down as a requirement).
Additional videos: Thanks for all the suggestions! There is always something to learn. We especially appreciate the air brake suggestion. The fact that to this day they still need to be connected manually is the reason that couplers are still called “semi-automatic” (or so “Trains” magazine tells us).
Again, thanks to everyone for their inputs. Keep it coming!
Thanks for the lesson !
I enjoyed this - thanks!
0:03 it almost shook the camera off
Thanks for a brief good history , Sir.
In Poland (Europe) we use chain system, which is pretty safe, because you're linking cars when they are stopped. I always wondered how american coupling can works till yesterday, they're interesting as they don't need anyone for them to clutch.
I've been there. you don't want any body parts to get caught in between two couplers, it will be a day you will regret.
Very interesting, thank you.
Indian railways also use AAR type couplers.
I'm pretty sure those old links and pins weren't just cast, they were forged (squished under high heat and pressure to push the atoms closer together) to make them stronger.
I was wondering if some of these Jenny couplers have a heavy buffer spring behind them inside their slack box? A lot of people think American couplers should break in no time with how they jar into each other at very low speeds. I am convinced there is a very heavy spring behind each coupler assembly acting as a shock absorber.
I think the link and pin coupler was not only a hazard for the worker's hand, over time the link could wear out and either break or break the pin.
There were many thousands of railroad workers killed in the performance of their jobs. Workers cost nothing, but safety improvements ate into profits. The Janney coupler (developed by a Confederate Veteran) saved many lives. Prior to this, workers were hired who were often missing fingers, as this was considered a measure of experience. The Janney coupler won a competition with several other designs.
It took decades AFTER the federal government mandated that railroad use the Westinghouse Air Brake system and the Janney coupler for them to be adopted.
Thanks for your comments. Here are some thoughts on those from our Museum volunteers
- RR workers certainly faced a number of life-threatening dangers in their work. Worker safety was a major political issue (as our videos point out), to the point that it was addressed in presidential candidates’ speeches. A lack of industry concern and treating workers as if they were expendable was often cited as contributing to those dangers.
- As an industry, railroad companies did take their time in adopting couplers, due in part to retrofit costs and the possibility of paying royalties to Janney or others. Early evaluations by the Master Car Builders Assn concluded that “survival of the fittest” was the only means available for selecting a practical design. That does make one wonder whether the association was really committed to resolving the matter.
- MCBA eventually moved toward “Janney style” couplers. However, McConway & Torley (one of the Pa RR’s biggest suppliers) had already licensed Janney’s patent as this process evolved. The MCBA forced Janney and McConway & Torley to relinquish their rights to certain aspects of their patents so coupler production would not be monopolized by a single firm. Even then, developing technical specifications for a usable coupler took considerable time. We can’t really say how much of this was due to the technical challenges, industry stalling or just association bureaucracy.
- Some companies, notably the Pennsylvania RR, sought a competitive advantage in early adoption and deployment of “Janney style” couplers. Air brakes also were being deployed before the congressional mandate. Their safety became a marketing pitch for the Pennsylvania RR and B&O RR. The Pa RR was aided by McConway & Torley’s early access to and involvement in the Janney coupler. (The company is still one of the largest producers of such couplers in the U.S.)
- Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable numbers for the degree to which air brakes and new couplers were used across the industry prior to the 1893 legislation. Locally (as in Fairfax Station), all the freight and passenger trains that ran along the Washington Division (the former O&A route) had air brakes by the late 1880s, well before the 1893 federal legislation (or so a Richmond & Danville RR representative stated in court depositions at the time). Southern Rwy - the R&D’s successor - did not adopt semi-automatic couplers until Congress passed the 1893 legislation.
- In our view, the 1893 legislation assured that an emerging trend became a universal requirement. Even then, the process was slow. There were several amendments to the act in the decades ahead, including extension of the mandate (1893 was the beginning of a global recession that seriously affected railroads.) And as we’ve discussed in the past, the most important aspect of the legislation might have been the requirement for standardization. Common equipment meant improved safety for workers but also major efficiency improvements for the industry.
- Janney’s Civil War service record has little to do with the coupler, of course, but it is an interesting detail for a person who remains something of a mystery. We think he was a quartermaster on Lee’s staff and was well behind the lines. Apparently he was quite proud of his service record in general and his association with Lee in particular, naming one of his sons after him and serving on various boards that organized commemorative events for Confederate veterans.
We are all far from being industrial historians but we see some parallels between railroads’ adoption of safety appliances and the auto industry’s adoption of passive restraints. Both industries showed reluctance to adopt them in part because of costs, licensing considerations, risk aversion and so on, but their deployment began in response to market demands before federal legislation required them. Federal legislation did push standardization/commonality which benefited everybody concerned. And now we take them for granted.
And finally, a plug for the museum is required! It is the details and nuances of these very complex events that makes history alive. I would encourage anyone reading this to come visit us so we can show off our recently acquired link and pin coupler. It came to us by way of John Sterling in the Chicago suburbs, whose father was a brakeman and kept all ten fingers intact until his last days.
Thanks for the video...I had heard that the inventor didn't work for the railroad, but didn't know about the safety laws that were passed to protect the brakemen. *Now,* do a video on the air system and show how THAT coupler can hold big pressures YET be pulled apart *without damage* when cars are separated. Research as I might, I can find no examples or pictures on Google or Wikipedia!
Ben Lundquist
Those hose ends get pulled off all the time. Locomotives have a box somewhere on them with some spare knuckle pins, trainline and locomotive M.U. Hoses and some wrenches to change them with. They also carry spare knuckles on the locomotives.
@@ralfie8801 Insightful. Watched a train in Folkston split yesterday and mid-DPU was on cam and watched them grab a knuclker and hose from the engine.
@@mattybice09
Somebody was, but I can’t take credit for it. All I can do is keep changing broken hoses and hanging new spare knuckles in their storage racks.
Still use link and pin at Nevada state railroad museum on the Inyo 22 and Glenbrook
I can't ever watch this again without thinking about that meme.
On the link and pin, the operator is suppose to use a baton to lift the link up for alignment. We can all figure how many times people in the real world just used their hand to damaging results.
As with most workplace safety this is more of the employers excuse then a practical reality, the provided equipment, training, work load etc end up dictating what really happens and we know American businesses consistently show disdain for worker safety.
Coupling at the beginning is WAY too fast. Per GCOR rule 7.4:
"Make couplings at a speed of not more than 4 MPH. Stretch the slack to ensure that all couplings are made."
Like they say, "Four miles per hour is a coupling, five miles per hour is a collision."
Thank you Mr. Andrew jackson Beard.
KNUCKLE OR BUCKEYE COUPLERS !
The American "Knuckle" (or Janney) semi automatic rigid coupler was invented in 1873, with detailed improvements up to 1882. It was also taken by "Mr. Pullman" to Britain in 1888, but it's introduction across Britain was slow, and did not become a "Carriage coupling" standard until after 1948. The British version of this coupling is also slightly smaller than its U.S counterpart. Further in Europe due to the existence of Buffers and "chain" type couplings on most vehicles. Means the British Buckeye, also has to have a mechanism to lower the "Buckeye" out of the way, to reveal a standard coupling hook behind. As the Buckeye was never adopted in mainland Europe.
The link and pin guys should have had a pair of tongs or something to keep their hands out of the way.
They did. It was a club with a notch to lift the link. Men were called "sissies" for using them!
Better to be nicknamed Sissy than Lefty.
How about "Nubby"!!
Being too protective is one thing but when you could have saved your hands by using a little common sense I think I'll keep my hands thank you.
Excelente!!
un video interesante.
saludos.
Very interesting info.
The RR industry in the United States doesn't use the "Janney" design anymore but a better design patterned by Andrew Jackson Beard, who introduced two improvements to his design in 1897 and 1899.
Fortunately Indonesia Used Janney Coupler For It's Railroad
I would have used and kept with me a thin steel bar to hold the link, instead of my fingers. Plus it could double as a weapon should you run into any shady characters.
The first five seconds is when me and my bro meet up on the weekend.
Well done! Thank you.
I would have used a piece of wood to guide the link into the slot.
The brake men were provided with pieces of wood, but in general they considered then to be clumsy and useless, and went right back to using (and losing) their hands. Incidentally, the railroad decided to switch to knuckle type connectors mostly because the links and pins kept disappearing from trains and reappearing in scrap yards, much less so than because their brake men kept losing fingers.
Europe still uses chain-based linking for carriages, because no standard was designed for non-trainsets.
nanderv well to an extent. Almost all actually passenger transport in Europe is carried out by fixed trainsets, so it's a bit of a non-issue. There were many railways that deviated from chains to, even in the 1920s the standard LNER carridges coupling was a knuckle coupler.
nanderv or with suckers
Ivan Wong no, suckers could never haul a train, way to weak.
Dubsy 102 I mean for passenger use,sry for not typing clearly
Ivan Wong I still don't really understand what you mean. Are the suckers just coupling the carridges? Are you talking about the brake' pipes?
In Europe we still in 2022 don’t have automatic couplers. We use screw couple and buffers..
Well there's DAC4EU project running. Likely will be a Scharfenbergtype winning. The SA3 alike one was withdrawn early on. Doubt the Swab-Type as a chance as Switzerland has already started using Scharfenberg on Cargotrains.
a similar design coupler was copied and applied in the Soviet Union in the 1940's during the lend lease program a hand full of ALCO RSC-1 locomotives bound for Iran were interned to the USSR for the war effort. The Former Soviet block countries are about the only countries still using the U.S. Copies of the standard couplers used today while Western Europe still uses a mix of coupling systems including link and pin.
RENFEMikado Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia also use the same same coupling system as Russia. It might also be used in Romania, Hungary, slovika and Poland in limited use considering that the Ukranian state railways links up with there networks.
RENFEMikado after the ussr fell Ukraine narrowed there track track down by 1 1/2 to 2 inches across most of there system and started to change trucks out under there cars and locomotives with adjustable axles similar to the MRS-1's locomotives built for the US army in the 1950's.
RENFEMikado the adjustable axles in Ukraine became a solution to speeding up an interchange point at the Polish border. Apparently this connection gives Ukraine a rail port to transfer coal or grain to ships on the Baltic Sea. There is a guy here in the U.S. that makes H.O. Scale Russian locomotives he's done the TEM series (Alco) copies and other Russian units. Not sure if he's active or not but his company is called Red Star Railways I think? If you get an MRS-1 made you going for the ALCO or the EMD production one?
RENFEMikado wish I could help you there my grandfather worked for Alco in there diesel engine shop in Auburn, New York. I have the last production book from the Auburn plant that reports where the last of the diesel engines are world wide.
RENFEMikado there are a few of them musuems here in the U.S. maybe they could help?
Woah. I bet that saved alot of amputations.
Я понял от силы слов 10, так как не знаю английского языка, но даже по иллюстрациям всё было достаточно понятно. Интересное видео.👍 Спасибо!
I knew someone who got crushed between those. He had to call his family to say goodbye. After he said his goodbyes they opened it so he could rest.
Now if only the guys who filmed Back to the Future 3 knew this piece of trivia.
Nobody ever thought about using a wire hook or something to pull the coupler hook up to align with the other coupler? Too "techy"?
I'm sure many did use that or something like it.
0:01 well that was rough
Good CGI, eh?
@@archdukeofsynth ..that, isn’t even CGI, that’s a capture of a train knuckle coupling.
@@duncanblack7359 Motion capture?
@@archdukeofsynth if by motion capture you mean he used a camera to capture motion, then yes.
@@archdukeofsynth imagine creating photorealistic CG for something that you can simply capture with a camera in a nearest railroad yard
I have an explanation of how the Janny coupler works. This might not be true. Reply if this is not how it works.
So, two knuckles close in on each other. Eventually, a bar in the middle of one coupler slides through a hole in the knuckle, locking it in place. The other knuckle is held by the lack of space between the coupler’s fixed piece and the other coupler.
I believe you are correct. The original Janney patent included a pin but I believe as the industry developed standards the locking mechanism evolved into a more robust mechanical part.If you send me an email address (mine is blamond@fairfax-station.org) I can send you copies of the Janney patent and a more recent industry standard drawing for passenger car couplers. Thanks!
I was always told that you could tell who the brakemen were because they were the ones missing fingers.
thank you
Isn't that first couple done a little too fast?
Yep. Tried to weld them together by slamming. ;)
Thanks bob
Funny thing was back then, the theft of the pins and links was a ridiculous problem of great magnitude. The railroads regularly went around retrieving them from junkyards. They tried to come up with ways to affix the things to cars to mitigate this problem. There were also several variations of the simple concept here. One was a dual-link side loader to keep hands out of the ends. Also, there were many many other types of semi-automatic couplers trying to gain acceptance at the trials held by the ICC, and they were almost all total failures. The Janney was the only one that worked well enough, so the gov't simply ordered everyone to use the Janney. The Burlington brake trials were similar, and there were more than one. The eventual winner of that one, Westinghouse, even failed the first trial, and they had to go back and try again at the next trial, with the triple valve solving the problem they had. Actually, the passenger cars of the day were allowed to have a different coupler, called the "Miller" that worked really well, but I think it had to have a special platform with it, so it ended up the passenger car was the only type of car that could accept it due to whatever limitations it had.
Would love to read any source material you have to add to the documentation we have for our history. Thanks.
I bought books years ago because railroad signaling and appliances are a keen interest of mine. "The Search for Safety" about mostly railroad signaling comes to mind. I think it was put out by Union Switch and Signal. It is possible quite a bit of my info came from this book, but I am not sure, since it dealt with signaling. . I read it over 30 years ago, and there are other fine books out there also. I really, really, wish I remember which book had all this info. I think everything I quoted above came from this one book. A list of all the pre-Janney stuff, and there were dozens of coupler examples, even semi-automatic link-pin arrangements! All kinds of semi-auto couplers. (Janney is actually this, after all, too. There is still manual stuff to do during and before lock-up) Some were ridiculous, and wouldn't function in a radius track, or would dis-connect in a turn. Some might work under factory conditions, but never in reality. The "turnip" was a ridiculous complicated contraption that probably would work until dirty or slightly worn, or as long as torsion or tension was "just so". Janney proved that the simple solution is the best one. Vertical plane, to allow for up-and-down motion was a big key to its success. The shortcoming of the Miller, I think, was it had to be restrained in a large end-sill or platform found only on passenger cars. It must have been good, or maybe in some ways better than Janney, or it never would have been allowed as an exception to Janney. Eventually, passenger cars were converted over to Janney types. Miller may have existed before Janney. For years, inventors worked on the coupler issue. They knew the need was great, but uniformity was essential, and back then railroads were anything but "uniform"! I will try and remember this book source, and I will re-visit and let you know what it was.
Could our Vice President reach out to you via email?
Sure can! madmaxmcgyver@yahoo.com. I will write back with my phone number! Definitely call me back! Only way to fly!! Post me right here to remind me when you write so I remember to check my email! I'm bad about that!
Just wondered if you ever wrote me? I'd love to communicate!
Where do you buy them? I mean, wich company?
Brandon Velasco buy what exactly? Not selling anything here.
@@RobertLamondJr couplers and knucles
Brandon Velasco I’d have no idea I’m afraid. Depending on where you live you can visit a (large) railroad museum and ask. The museum I volunteer at doesn’t have access to those sorts of items.
I have a train yard right next to my neighborhood and everytime they connect they are loud Af
when did the link and pin start and when did they stop using then great vid thanks
I reckon coupler are the strongest thing on a train,built for shear strength 100k plus easy
0:02 they don't have to couple up that hard.
Holy crap that first joint clip, do you think the engineer made the pin drop or what
The coupling at the start. We call them knuckles
I wonder me - after I know this system is so old and so good - why it is not used in Europa, Asia or Africa after 1873?
Probably a combination of expense and lighter, shorter trains. The Janney/MCB coupler is capable of handling the enormous loads of American freight trains. That, added to the use of Westinghouse's triple-valve air brake, is what allowed the size difference between American cars and train lengths, simply not possible with the screw-link coupler in wide use in Europe. In the UK, for instance, freight trains -- goods trains, to them -- were .loose-coupled and without continuous brakes into recent years, braking being done by the guard's van, more or less equivalent to the caboose. The guard's van had brakes.
Presently used in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, South and North Korea. The similar SA3 coupler is used throughout eastern Europe.
what if you just held the link with another object
you’d think you could just hold up the link with like… a hooked piece of wood or something?
seems like im gonna need to recouple my fucking eardrums after the intro
I know the USA type automatic coupler as a buckeye.
Robert Lamond Jr...'here in the US'
Neat history lesson but I often wonder...when do 'mericans finally realize these are NA standards applicable in 2 countries?
Cool
Oof that intro couple was really rough
Ah good ol Orange VA and Alexandria VA
Hard couple at the beginning. Something in those cars got broke.
0:02 rip headphone users
in the mid 1800s, a brakeman's worth was determined by how many fingers were missing!!!
You forgot the pro of there mobility. Knuckle couplers hated inclines.
+Weyerhaeuser Railfan Thanks for that point out! In trying to keep the video to few minutes a lot of information was not included!
Ouch! No need to hit them that hard! Its not train sim you know!
GaryNumeroUno Or is it ;)
Dude that's average speed to come it to hook up most locomotives come in at 5-10 mph they are solid steel you know not plastic
Normally this will not damage couplers, locomotives and cars (actually as we know this happens all time in hump yard). but the impact may cause cargo or passengers in cars damaged or injured. An emergency stop on an autocar train, may cause cars in the same car has chain collision, damage both cars and autocar. Just only from gaps between couplers can cause such damage on cargo, a hard hit when coupling cars can produce much stronger impact.This is why Union Pacific make videos to tell their box car and container customers how to place their cargo and use air bag to prevent damage. So even in train sim, I do my best to couple cars softly (stop several fts before hit, then move train with notch 1).
I work on a shortline, and what really makes the difference between a gentle coupling and damaging equipment and product is good communication between the conductor/brakeman and engineer. Although sometimes the coupler pins don't fall, so sometimes you either manually close one knuckle and open another, or you just have the engineer give it a good bump. Now when both knuckles are closed or misaligned so that they butt and close without coupling, that's really when damage can be done. It's also loud as hell when it happens too.
i saw a whole rusted coupler box get pushed in once- totaled the car it was attached to. better they found out in the yard than going up a hill in the middle of a mile long consist.
Great informative video, but lighting? the presenter is a little bit on the dark side...
justandy333 You don’t want to see my face clearly, believe me!
Wow, I applaud you in your under 30 second response. But believe me we do. Personality and enthusiasm about a particular subject is infinitely more inspiring to the viewer than ones complexion.
justandy333 Hah! It’s the old wrinkled skin that would scare most! We are a non-professional group, but always trying to improve! Please check out the other videos we have at the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum website via the TH-cam link at the bottom of the page. www.fairfax-station.org
I will do, take care :)
0:00 was definitely more than 5 miles per hour. Lol 😂
It just locks and all the worker has to do is connect the air brake pipe
i guy i know is missing several fingers from a coupling.
I don't know why nobody ever held up the link with a stick or something, it would be so simple
and the first clip is a GCOR violation, way to fast coupling
more more !!
0:00 watching coupler. 0:02 loud as fuck rusty metal sound that will destroy your ears completely
First 5 seconds... what in the hell is that? You’re coupling not welding, if you can see the dust flying you’re doing it wrong... if you’re good at coupling you’ll tell them to stop soon enough that the only noise you hear is the one or both pins falling
0:02