Coupler equipment photographed in Canada is included.
More pieces on railcar design evolution can be found by pressing the Railway Technology & Systems 04 'radio button' above ... and then scrolling down to the Railway Cars heading on that page.
This 1908 edition of Kirkman's Science of Railways shows technical drawings of some of the one hundred or so different variants of Janney-style couplers produced by different manufacturers.
Figure 5 appears above. It is difficult to make it attractive as the left margin disappears into the 700-page book's deep gutter. However, you get the idea: The Master Car Builders are working through the painstaking process of achieving an initial universal standard which US railroads should follow. With longstanding cross-border operations, large Canadian railways interchanging with, or operating in, the US are affected by these decisions as well.
In the 1890 Congressional hearings, some railroads seemed particularly inflexible. The Pennsylvania Railroad representative spoke of the corporate standardizing mission of the legendary Altoona Shops pertaining to the wide range of products which the railroad purchased. He didn't seem particularly amenable to the idea of compromising on ... coupler designs to reach a national standard ... or the rate at which couplers would be converted on the PRR. In 1890, I think he said the Pennsy was 10% converted to Janney-type. (It seemed to me he was not a nuts and bolts operating person who was empowered to publicly commit to any particular course of action - unlike some of the other witnesses.)
Most of the text and diagrams which follow in the book (and which are not included here) are exhaustively technical and devoted to presenting to the professionals who bought this series of books, the exact testing procedures of the Master Car Builders for coupler standards testing: minimum batch size, number of samples from a batch to submit for testing, types of standardized tests (including repeated drop testing in a special device) to determine strength, drawbar rigidity, etc.
I am just presenting the diagrams showing the wide variety of designs.
Imagine, if you were running a railway's spare part inventory ... the absolute impossibility of keeping replacement parts in stock for 100 different types of automatic couplers!
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| from: Van Horne's Road; Lavallee; 1974; Railfare. |
On the CPR at Laggan (later Lake Louise) circa 1884, we see the expected link and pin couplers in use.
As previously discussed, end doors were used to load/unload 'full length' products, such as lumber.
A multi-storey boarding car can be seen at the left.
After the black bar in the image below (see Figure 114), we see two processes for making a coupling when knuckles are missing, or broken and removed.
As you will have noticed, all of the couplers above are notched in the middle of the knuckle, with vertical holes formed at the knuckles' outer end. A link could be inserted into the notch and it could be held in place using a standard coupling pin. The first image of Figure 114 shows 'the old way' of coupling by hand when faced with automatic coupler problems ... by using two pins and a link.
So that a brakeman does not have to stand in front of a moving car when both cars were previously equipped with functioning automatic couplers, the Hinson Emergency Knuckle can (theoretically) be used to make the coupling 'automatically'.
This process involves first attaching the emergency knuckle into the defective coupler using a pin. Then the cars can be moved together to complete the coupling. The undamaged knuckle-equipped automatic coupler closes and locks onto the emergency knuckle.
Again, this preserves the key safety feature of automatic couplers - that the brakeman does not have to stand in front of an approaching car with a link and pin in his hands to complete a coupling.
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Above, is detail taken from the exhaustively-labelled car diagram below.
In particular, the name 'deadwood' (item 57) was indeed an official part name. You may recall brakemen coupling link and pin cars generally had to ensure they were not crushed by the two protruding deadwoods as the cars came together.
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| from: A Way to the West; Allan Bell; 1991; Privately published. |
Above: Detail from the Canada Atlantic yard at Bridge Street in Ottawa, undated. In the few Canadian photos available in my books which show car ends for this era, people are often posing right in front of the coupling system!
The lumber car at the left shows a link and pin coupler pocket. It has a brake handwheel located to the left of the coupler pocket. The handwheel assembly is therefore one more crush hazard the brakeman has to watch for as the cars come together.
The boxcar 2443 at the right has a link pinned in place. The draft horses have been by (watch your step) and, in fact, you can see a wagon with a draft horse being loaded at the right of the photo. A person seems to be taking a stroll along the roof walks on the next track over.
A phenomenon I hadn't noticed before are the streaks of car oil on the ends of the 8944 and the 2443. The oil has leaked out of the journal wells onto the wheels and has been 'spun off' while the cars were in motion.
If you return to the CPR Laggan photo, you'll see this phenomenon on the CPR car as well.
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| from: Over the Hills to Georgian Bay; Niall MacKay: 1981; Boston Mills. |
Above: The Canada Atlantic station in Ottawa in 1895. At the left, you can see a Maine Central car which has arrived in interchange, still with a link and pin coupler and (it appears) without an air brake hose. Cars were usually shopped for conversion to air brakes and automatic couplers at the same time.
Generally, during the transition period, air brake-equipped cars would be marshaled immediately behind the engine so the engineer had the maximum control over the train using all available automatic brakes.
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| from: Van Horne's Road; Lavallee; 1974; Railfare. |
This beautiful photo shows a stock car which was probably retrofitted with Janney-style couplers and air brakes. Built as a stock car by the Perth Car Shops in 1883, the car is shown in 1901. Other cars with similar modern equipment can be seen in the background.
Notice the interesting tracked door on the end. Its travel could be limited to admit only a stock attendant and to prevent livestock egress. Half of this door is barred like the main doors.
Below the coupler, you can see the old-style outside brake beam which was sometimes a source of injury for brakemen as they worked to complete a link and pin coupling with an approaching car of this design. Bonus detail: On this occasion, this car is loaded with car wheels.
I may well be wrong, but the little cylinder near the roofline ... atop the pipe rising behind the ladder ... may be a hard-to-read item 195 on the MCB standard boxcar diagram: 'pressure retaining valve'. Of course, modern practice is to locate retainer valve handles under the carbody. However, in 1900 and for decades to come - even with air brake-equipped cars ... brakemen often travelled along the roofwalks to relay hand signals during switching and to apply the handbrakes on kicked cars.
... During a Canadian winter with snow heavily drifted along the tracks, the car roofwalks would be relatively free of deep snow ... and hopefully free from ice! When a train required retainers to be turned up or down, one could argue that time was always saved in winter by following the traditional route of the car roofwalks and adjusting the retainers from that location. Trudging through the deep snow along the roadbed can take a great deal of time and energy.
