What is an anticlimber?
From what I can tell, it seems to be a lip on the front and rear edges of the platform of hood units, but I’m not sure. Also, who or want is kept from climbing by an anticlimber?
Originally, anticlimbers were applied to trolley and interurban cars. The worst thing that can happen in a collision is for the carbody sma***hrough the front of a car, crushing the passengers in the second car (i.e. “telescoping”). An anticlimber keeps one car in a collision from riding up over the fram of a second car, preventing “telescoping”.
Thanks, Dan.
The anti-climber also prevents large items on the track from climbing up onto the front and or rear of the locomotive
Ch
Thanks you, psngrtrn.
To further Dan’s posting – if you look at trolley car (or interurban) anti climbers, I think you will better understand how they worked. They were a steel fascia at about frame level, with several deep horizontal ribs. The theory is that in a collission the ribs would catch each other and prevent one car or the other from rising. In practice this worked for slow speed collissions between cars of roughly the same height and weight. In practice too big a mismatch on any of those factors, or too great a speed, and disasters of the sort that ruined the 1950 NMRA convention in Milwaukee could occur.
Dave Nelson
Okay, Dave, what happened during the 1950 NMRA convention?
I was 2 year old in 1950, so I wasn’t reading MR or even the daily paper then.
Yeah! I was only 6 in 1950, didn’t know there was an NMRA when I was that age. I was playing with trains, however! What happened to ruin the 1950 NMRA convention?
YNCS and Ebriley,
I haven’t looked it up, but as I remember, there was a traction fan trip associated with the convention. Unfortunately, there was a collision involving a least one unit, with a resulting loss of life and that obviously put a pall on the remainder of the convention. Someone else probably can fill in the details.
IIRC, the office work for the NMRA at the time was being done by a gentleman named Bob Bast, who operated out of a basement office in Canton, OH. Yes, the NMRA has come a long way in terms of its office staff, library, Web site, product offerings and organization.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
John Page recounted the tragic event at the 1950 NMRA convention in an issue of Model Railroader during the late 1980s-early 1990s, IIRC. I seem to recall a more recent account of the incident, but can’t quite remember if or when it was published.