Railroad Coupler
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- čas přidán 20. 06. 2024
- See the insides of a Type-F railroad coupler including the knuckle, lock, rotor, knuckle thrower, and rotary lock-lift assembly. I found this coupler by the side of a bike trail in the Edwardsville Illinois area. The bike trail is build on an old railroad bed and the coupler must have been abandoned there. There may have been a railroad accident associated with it because of the damage that is visible: the end loop is cracked off, which is where all of the load would be to pull the train, and one of the ears of the coupler is cracked off as well. However, the inner workings are all there and I was able to remove enough rust to disassemble the coupler. It had to have been sitting in the dirt for about 40 to 50 years. It would really be interesting to know the history behind it and how it got there.
- Jak na to + styl
And my wife accuses me of bringing crap home. You sir are my hero !
Yeah - she does put up with my collecting of odd things.
I feel your pain.
I have never had an interest in how a type f coupling worked. Watches entire video.
Helluva paperweight!
@@johnsworkshop3312 Sounds like a definite keeper to me!
No idea how I got here or why this was on my suggested feed, but I'm glad it was. That was pretty interesting!
Glad you enjoyed it!
ditto
I can't believe you got it apart! It looked like a massive rust pile. Thanks for the explanation.
Yeah, for a while there I thought I would never get any of the pieces to move again.
@@johnsworkshop3312 This is actually bottom operated CBC. Newer versions use TOP OPERATED HANDLE ARRANGEMENTS
As someone tasked with training the next generation of railroaders, I want to thank you for this video, John- I actually use this in my classroom to give student conductors an overview of what's going on internally in a controlled environment before I get them in the field to learn it hands-on. Well done.
Wow, thank you. It is really cool that you’re using it for training!!!
Wow that’s pretty neat! Definitely something I would drag home had I come across it, glad you did it for me! Very cool to see how they work
Glad you liked it!
And with today's multi-mile long trains, Distributed Power Units or DPU's are placed in the middle (or thereabouts) of the train to ease stresses on the couplers. If they break, the train goes into emergency and the crew spends the next few hours replacing the coupler. After seeing this great video, I can appreciate what is involved in taking a broken one off and putting a new one on :)
Thanks for watching. That would be a heavy job to replace!
@@johnsworkshop3312 Amen! And most freight trains have a crew of two - engineer and conductor :)
It is usually just the knuckle and/or the knuckle pin that breaks.
yeah - this seems like a more unusual failure and folks seem to think that derailment was the cause.
The knuckle pin is JUST used as the rotational axis for the knuckle. It bares none of the weight of pulling the train and in fact once the coupler is closed and locked, the pin can be removed without any problem... Until the coupler is opened, at which point the ~80lbs knuckle heads for the ballast.
The rod you are talking about to open it is called a uncoupling rod. That’s what we called them at Trinity rail. I worked there from 1996 to 2008 in Cartersville Ga. this brings back lots of memories.
Thanks
Big A.
Thanks akabiga123, I am learning a lot from the comments. Thanks for watching.
@@johnsworkshop3312 We just called it a "cut lever".
That's going to be tough to mount on a wall in a shadow box.
Yeah. My wife is still wondering what we are going to do with it.
@@johnsworkshop3312 Well if she doesn't like it she can move it wherever she wants!!
I love it! I'll see what she says, but I'll bet it stays put.
@@johnsworkshop3312 - Tell her it's to mold the special wedding cake tins for some happy couple . . .
Right - she loves wedding stuff.
My dad worked for the PA RR (PennCentral and Conrail) for 40 years. A number of years he was an inspector of all things RR. From track, to motors, to entire locomotives. He went to the factories that mfg the products used by the RR to verify that the products met the specification before purchase. A few times he would take me along with him. I remember going to a plant in WV that mfg rail. In today's world he would have been considered "uneducated", he dropped out of school at 14 to work and help his extended family get through the depression. The the real world he was brilliant, he could learn how to do anything by reading and then doing. Thanks for sharing your experience with your daughter.
Thanks Average Joe for sharing. Your dad sounds like a great guy! Kind of like my grandfather who had to quit school and work the coal mine when his dad got injured.
Of all the odd-ball videos I've watched over the years - this was the most interesting.
Awesome! Thank you!
That sounds like a really cool experience. Once I retire I always thought it would be cool to volunteer a a place like the Museum of Transport here in St. Louis.
I would want to use this as I start my toy train collection and track that goes through the middle of my home and down the neighborhood….Woo. Wooo! !
Now that would be cool!
Electrolysis - genius!
Excellent explanation, great video!
Thank you - it was a fun project. Open to suggestions for improvement.
@@johnsworkshop3312 Very nice Video and Explanation John. Your local Libraries should have newspaper archives on micro film where you might be able to find the reporting of that train wreck with a bit of research. A Librarian would be able to guide you on how and where you should start. No doubt it was a big local news event in the press when it occurred. It might help to start which RR owned those tracks that was there and go from there. Ask about if your library has a media department at the Main Library near you. It's worth a few questions a least. Best wishes.
I’ve checked online and haven’t yet found one in that area. My next step when I get time is the local Madison County Historical Society.
I'm so glad that you and your daughter did this together!
Thanks. Me too! Great bonding.
Yeah, I need to find another project for the two of to work on. Thanks for watching!
Tight lock coupler type F . These are used on passenger locomotives and passenger cars. This one came off of a passenger car. I can tell because the cut lever is from the bottom and not from the top as it would be on a locomotive. Also I can tell it came from a passenger car because it has a vertical hole through the shank. Only locomotives and passenger cats are set up with this kind of draft gear. Freight cars have the draft gear pins inserted from the sides of the shank. There are a very few exceptions to this rule but that would be extremely unlikely to find along the tracks.
Go to your local library and look for an article about and passenger train derailments in your area. This kind of coupler was used from the early forties to the present but you can narrow the search from say 1940 to about 1970.
Good luck.. you may have found a bit of history.
Awesome reply. you sir are why i read comments. Always learn something new. thank you
@@ArizonaCowboys
Thank you for being so kind.
Railroad is what I do. I am a locomotive composite mechanic and have worked extensively with railway passenger cars.
Thank you.
Ditto on complimenting you for a great response. My first thought when he described where he found the coupling was that the part had been sheared off of a car due to an accident. It's hard for most people today to understand how common derailments of both freight and passenger trains were in the heyday of the railroad industry.
@@wayneparker9331
I am just trying not to sound like a know it all. I do enjoy my work thoroughly and love to share in this great vocation.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
I always wondered how those couplers worked. Thanks for the detailed video.
My pleasure. Thanks for watching. It was a fun project. I’ve learned a lot about couplers.
Thanks for showing how a train knuckle works.
Glad it was helpful!
I am GLAD that you gave us a HAND understanding the COUPLER .
Thanks!
I’ve known the very BASIC operation of knuckle couplers for over 70 years, but never knew the internals and how the couplers operate. Excellent video, thanks!
Glad I could help!
My Dad worked as a brakeman on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in California for 30+ years so he knew that, but I never did even ask him about how they work. Now I know. I'm sure he's smiling.
Awesome!! I bet he is too. Glad I could help!
Thanks -- I never knew what was happening inside the coupler.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for this well-made documentary. I've looked at a lot of train separation videos but no one seemed to explain how the parts of the coupler work. I needed the information for parts of an article I'm writing, and didn't want to mess it up. I sure appreciate the accurate information ! If you are not a science teacher, you sure should be.
Thanks Roc Doc!!
What an awesome find. I’m still having a hard time figuring out how this works. Thanks for showing the internal parts.
Glad you found the video interesting! Thanks for commenting!!
Great video, thanks for sharing! I love the dog anchor anode!
Thanks for watching!
This is such a great video! I never realized that there were so many moving parts, and just to think, that device has to withstand the load imposed on it keeping rail road cars together! I would like to see the Westinghouse braking system used on old steam train locomotives.
Wow - thank you. That braking system would be fascinating to see!
@@johnsworkshop3312 North American Railroad air brake systems are both simple and sophisticated. Electronic Air Brake control systems have been in development for decades but none are being considered for universal application at this time.
I appreciate that you answered the question that immediately came to mind when I saw this first thing
Thanks Slater!
Nice find. We just found a knuckle in the park and two wheeled it home. Can't believe I found such a similar story on here. I might go back with a metal detector to see if the rest of the coupler is hiding. Thanks for the video.
Very cool. I hope you find more! Thanks for the feedback!
Cool knuckle assembly! A very thorough job of explaining how coupler assembly functions (PLUS you cleaned it all up and made it function once again)!
Great effort. Imagine being the lone engineer on a "dark and stromy night in the middle of nowhere" ...aaaaand carrying a replacement knuckle 40-50 car
lengths to wear your knuckle broke. In your particular case, the entire "knuckle assembly" broke off. The engineer was dead in the water! Usually only
the knuckle(coupler) portion of assembly breaks. Yes a "knuckle carrier" would have been quite helpful. Eack knuckle can weigh 85-90 lbs upto 110 lbs
for a loco coupler. Type F and Type E knuckles. Your situation is unque. You got not only the broken knuckle...you have the entire knuckle/coupler assembly.
Fascinating...excellent demo.
Wow. What a great image of what it must have been like back then. I wish I could identify when the derailment happened. I figure it was after the mid fifties since that is when the type F came out.
*Great job using electrolysis to remove the rust and get it working again! Amazing how complicated that casting is... Lots of old school skill to make something like that*
Yes - it seems so simple when you look at it, but there is a lot of refinement building up to that design based on real-world learning.
I love this. My family and I are always finding spikes and unidentified metal pieces near the tracks at the park where we go bike riding. Also I just recently learned that the deadliest passenger train disaster in U.S. history happened here in Nashville in a spot I’ve driven past a thousand times. The Great Train Wreck of 1918.
Wow, that is pretty wild. So much history out there to learn about. I’ll have to look that one up. Thanks for the comment.
Type F would be the style I'd choose if I had a railcar. It really is a big improvement over type E. Now I know E heads out there want to argue, but simply comparing knuckle throwers will show you this is the superior coupler.
Thanks for sharing!
I'm from Palestine Texas where we have the Texas state railroad and I thought the video was very informative thanks.
I used to think that Palestine was in Israel?????
It's pronounced differently. Where I'm from is in East Texas. But they do jokingly call it the holy city. Lol
Thanks Nate! Glad you liked it!
As a teen, I found an air hose along the Southern Pacific tracks on Alameda in Compton, California. Tried my best to take it home, but because I was riding a bike it proved to be too difficult to carry due to its weight. I regret not trying harder. One heck of a souvenir that would have made
Yeah - no kidding. I learned early on that if you find something like that laying around you need to jump on it or it may be gone when you get back. With this coupler it is so heavy I'm sure that prevented the casual passer-by from absconding with it.
@@johnsworkshop3312 Great points... So true! LOL
Great video. Thanks for sharing your realy cool finding with us, and how it works.
That would make a great mailbox post. Mailbox mounted on the knuckle with the coupler bolted to a heavy pipe buried in the ground.
Great idea. Nobody will run over it that way!
@@johnsworkshop3312 ,they might , but just once😉
Great find and good work cleaning up the moving bits. Thanks for showing it's function as well. That's a great piece of history to just trip over.
Thanks 👍
Nice piece of Americana there! Rescued from eternal obscurity....nice hearth piece, conversation piece and excellent for heat retention! Thanks
Well said!
Cool, thanks for doing all the work to demonstrate this.
My pleasure. Thanks for watching!
Don't know why this appeared in my feed, but very interesting. Thanks for being curious and persistent enough to take this project on!
Thanks for the feedback Steven!
Simple operations and parts and well explained. Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback!
Wow! Thank you for the detailed explanation!
Thanks for the positive feedback!
That is pretty dang cool. Nice video. Thanks.
Thanks!!
Careful - chemistry may persist on old rail lands. What a teardown- good find!
Thanks for watching and for your comment!
I had no idea. Great info. Trains are a great part of America’s history, past and present.
Thanks BruceR, I've always been fascinated by them ever since I was a little kid.
That was a great find! Thank you for making that video. It was absolutely clear. Great job!
Thank you Willworth!!
@@johnsworkshop3312 welcome!
More components than I expected. Cheers from Sydney Australia
Cheers!
Just imagine the tensile force on the very front coupler. Especially on freight trains. It’s basically holding on all the cars behind it!
Yes - it is huge. I did some research and found that couplers need to be able to handle 350,000 pounds both in tension and compression. They proof test them to 700,000 pounds of force to ensure they do not break and are good at 350,000 pounds.
Typically on a 135 car loaded coal train, the force in the first knuckle is approx. 440,000 pounds, when the slack is all stretched out. Or so they taught us.
Shear force as well. That pivot pin is all shear--no tension.
All the couplers have a strength of 550,000 lbs. most trains run around 450,000 lbs because you have a rolling resistance of that. It’s steel wheels on steel track that makes it easy to roll.
Not to mention all the components working with the coupler, such as the the yoke, the vertical pin, the draft gear. The structural integrity of the lugs in the draft pocket is something to be considered as well. I've seen many lugs fail and the entire draft system is torn out.. aye.. excellent video
Can you imagine the amount of force that's put on the first couple of a two mile long flight train? The force would ease up a bit the further back the car is.
Beautiful lawn
Thanks!
The things I've learned about on CZcams is fantastic! Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
Most interesting…and well described. Glad you did this. A very unique video. Thank you kind sir.
Thank you for the feedback Soupe Dujour! My pleasure.
Nice video.
Nice lawn.
Nice birds in the background.
😃
Thank you Silver Drill Pickle!
Interesting. And a great boat anchor.
Yeah, I just need the boat now!
Try not to toss that in your boat while at the dock though or you might just sink it!
That is one hell of a paperweight my friend
Indeed!
That is some serious engineering and casting.
yes - amazing evolution over the years.
@@johnsworkshop3312 What totally amazes me is in the 1800s when they were casting these and also massive gears and the like, they also had to have massive machines to make massive machines. A bit like the chicken or the egg question.🤔🤣
Yeah - sometimes people forget how advanced engineering was back then.
Thanks for taking the time to share.
My pleasure!
Thanks for sharing ☀️
Thanks for watching!
Back in the late 60s when I was 12-13 years old, I used to watch trains switch at a factory/wharehose. Sometimes a crewman would let me uncouple cars. I remember thinking, if I ever work on the railroad, I better prepare by lifting weights!
Yeah - that stuff is really heavy!
Pretty cool find. Nice video.
Thank you!!
I broke 1 or 2 of those couplers in my short time as a worker at a power plant in Northern Nevada. That plant had a hundred car coal train come every 30 hours with a load. In the winter, the hatches on the cars would freeze up and we would be sent to the trellis to “help” unload the train. I never worked outside and had no gear for the freezing weather. So there I was, with a heavy jacket, playtex kitchen gloves on a slippery steel trellis with it snowing and a train that would not vomit its treasure. Wham, wham we would hit the cars hoping the discharge gates would spring open and, yep, a few times they did. Then we would have the engineer accelerate the train and slam the brakes to jar the doors open. It worked for a few cars and suddenly the coupler broke. Yaahoo, break time at 3 in the morning.
Wow - that sounds like quite a job! And dangerous too! Thanks for sharing that wild experience!
In England we had ( on the old slam door stock ) the BUCKEYE which worked on a similar principle. To open you had to reach down and pull a lever which opened the coupler so another can be attatched. You only needed one to be open to Couple Up. But it was also mounted on a loco screw coupling underneath so if buckeye fails, it can be raised to release holding pin, then lowered so loco pin is used instead. I only ever had one fail in service and at that time we were empty stock returning to depot. There was one occasion when a driver at our depot got laughed at, at every station he pulled into whilst driving a rush hour service. It turned out that a pigeon, disturbed on the track, flew up and got wedged in the buckeye coupler. It was released by using a hook-switch pole and flew away, much to every ones surprise. This happened in the 1980s.
Wow - cool stories. Thanks for sharing!
Fascinating!
Thanks for this, Great explanation!
You're very welcome!
Excellent job!
Thank you very much!
Now that is one cool find!
Thanks LarJgrip!
Very simple, very clever, very robust.
The design is indeed pretty amazing. Lots of thought went into it.
Very cool and gosh darn interesting! Nicely done sir!
Thank you!!
Thanks for the video, just keep going by the tracks you will have the whole locomotive in no time.
Lol, I keep looking!
Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure! Thanks for watching!
Such a good visual educational video. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for your comment!!
What I often wondered but never knew how to ask!
Glad I could help!
Wow! Cool video! 👍👍
Thank you!
I think it's amazing that you got all the parts to move again.
When I started work on it I wasn’t sure that would ever happen. But I kept chipping away at it and finally one day I was able to move the pin a little bit. Once I got that out, progress went faster.
@@johnsworkshop3312 One of life's curiosities solved. Thanks !
Great Video!
Thanks!
They take on a helluva load...especially the one on the locomotive that pulls the entire train!
awesome find
Thanks Burial!
Fantastic excellent job, super communication skills. Very detailed, could not be any better of a video. I was raised in Northeast Ohio and I grew up around a lot of trains. I always wondered how those things worked.
Cool - thanks - I grew up around Cleveland! Always loved listening to them come by as a kid!
@@johnsworkshop3312 small world I still live in Cleveland as a matter of fact. We probably listen to the same trains.
I'll be you're right - I was in Berea and there was a RR crossing at Bagley road. That's where the whistle sounds came from.
It’s more than likely leftover from a train derailment is why it’s broken and you found it where you did, this doesn’t just get tossed off like a beer can!
That was my original thought (seeing it broken in those couple of spots).
WOW IT NEVER ENDS TO AMAZE ME THAT PEOPLE WHO WATCH VIDEO'S KNOW FUCKING MORE THAT THE ONE WHO MADE THE VIDEO. BUT CAN'T EVEN BACK A CAR OUT OF THE GARAGE......... GO FIGUE
@@mefirst4266 Not so unusual after all if you found a bone lying in the middle of the railroad tracks and an anthropologist commented on it don’t you think he would know more than you even though you were the one who found it?!
@@mefirst4266 well coming from someone who can't even spell "go figure" correctly, and the fact that most of these people have been around trains since they were little children, you might want to check that attitude, because maybe one or more of the people might work in the rail industry.
@@michaelking3327 ..The caps lock scared me to death!!!
Nice Find
Thanks for this. It helps me to see inside.
Thanks for the feedback!
@@johnsworkshop3312You're welcome.
I've always wanted to find a coupler!
Yeah - I cannot believe I found it out there after so many years. I figure it was probably left there in the 1960s or 1970s (still working to figure that out). So it would have been out there for maybe 50 years and nobody took it. Maybe because it was so heavy. It was only about 10 feet from the trail.
F U N N Y
Nice coupler! Looks heavy!
Never done it myself, but imagine trying to replace a coupler in a driving rainstorm & thunder, or @ 10-20 below zero. All the time knowing Dispatch wants it done ASAP to keep the traffic or Amtrak flowing.
@@jamessimms415 ..............I've done it, it's no fun...........the knuckle weighs about 80 lbs. If you break a drawbar there's usually some poor train handling involved unless it was defective. I only saw 3 broken drawbars in my railroad career and those require mechanical staff to replace.
Glad to hear that is not very common.
I can only imagine. Sounds like a recipe for an injury
Excellent. Thanks!
Thanks Patrick!
Wow!. Now 30 something plus years ago i took home used tie plates from the CTA. I haven't graduated to this level yet. I've never disassembled a knuckle beyond the locking block,
When I brought it home I had no idea what was inside it. It took a lot of research to figure it out, especially since all of those parts were essentially fused together in there. When I started I never thought I would be able to separate them. We seem to have lots of tie plates and rail pieces around here that were just shoved off to the side when the bike trails were put in.
Very interesting. It’s really amazing how many heavy and complex parts are on a single rail car. We take for granted how much material and labor went into the construction of each car. Diesel electric locomotives are a whole different level !
Well said!
Thank you for the great video. I was particularly interested in the coupler because of the following. My grandfather Robert H Carr ,born in 1882 worked for the Erie Lackawana railroad,I believe. He had only one arm which was severed just below the elbow. The story we were told was that he lost his arm coupling a train. He had to drop a pin in the couple and the train lurched and his arm was caught in the couple. Your video helped me understand better how this accident may have happened. Idont know the year of the accident but it was probably in the very early 1900 s. I will pass your video on to my family . Thank You.
Thanks for your comment John - that is really tragic. My grandfather lost his arm in a threshing machine. It only takes a second for something to go wrong. People are a lot more safety conscious these days.
Might have been a link and pin coupler instead of a knuckle coupler?
Thanks for the information.
You bet!
I went to Grad School at SIU-E and lived near BAC.
Cool video
Cool. Our house is close to SIU-E. Great part of the country.
Thanks. There is a big spring that helps absorb the shock that goes on that part somwhere.
Interesting. I bet that part stayed with the rail car.
@@johnsworkshop3312 it goes right behind the broken off part. It is called the draft gear. It takes something like 47,000psi to compress the spring enough to remove and install.
Wow - that would need some serious tools to be changed out.
The draft gear that I am aware of were made of alternating metal plates and rubber blocks. They were assembled inside a cast steel box.
Pretty damn cool. Thanks!
My pleasure - thanks for watching!
GOOD WORK!
Thank you! Cheers!
Great to see this.👍☘️
Thanks for the feedback!
I live in St. Louis. I don t know if you have ever been to the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis County, but I bet they would love to have that coupler and your video explaining how you found it cleaned it up and how it works. Maybe they would give you a couple of lifetime passes
I have been there, and most recently my daughter and I went. I was eyeballing all of the couplers there and none of them were this Type-F. I should contact them - good idea.
When using electrolysis you will get much better results with washing soda instead of baking soda. At least I have. Also I seem to get better results using rebar as my sacrificial piece of metal than other junk metal. That coupler is a heck of a find…..hard to believe no one has snagged it all these years. On a side note I live in Alton…….small world. Excellent content btw
Thanks for the tip Alco Power - next time I'll give that a try. Yeah - I couldn't believe nobody had snagged it either. I was pretty excited to find it!
Interesting video
Thanks for the visit
Cool vid, Thanks ✌️
Thanks for watching!
An ingenious invention...some unsung design engineer should be getting credit with his name attached to the coupler, i.e. a "Hadsen Coupler."
Yeah, it would be nice to know who designed the type F.
That is rotary car dumper F type coupler from b end ( stationary). On a end of the car F type coupler ( rotational). Thank you ! Good video
Thank you Gura Salo for the information and the kind words.
Found one of theses beside a crossing a few years back. My plan was to take it home until I realized I'd need a tractor to move it anywhere
Yeah - it is super heavy - more than you would think just looking at it. I am definitely not strong enough to lift it up by myself. Mostly just pivot it around if I need to move it.
Lol good vid. This is the first time I have heard a kicker called a knuckle thrower.
I like that "kicker" terminology!