It works in model trains so why not in real life? Lionel had a system that pushed the pins apart and detached the cars. What I am proposing here is that there would be a magnectic device that would uncouple cars and a control panel at the head end were the engineer would type in the car number and detatch the car. I know that the FRA has plans in the works on their website for this… https://railroads.dot.gov/rolling-stock/current-projects/advanced-tri-coupler
There is one minor issue that you failed to address. How would you make or break the air line connections remotely?
Transit trains have airlines built into the coupling knuckles.I believe that the FRA website deals with this
The “Tri-Coupler" makes the air brake pipe connection when the couplers are pushed together to make the coupling. It then breaks the air connection when the coupler breaks its coupling connection. It breaks the coupling connection when the coupler pin is pulled as it does with standard practice today. The only extra feature that is needed is a remote control to pull the pin instead of using the existing manual pin lifter lever.
The pin could be lifted by a person on the ground or by someone in the cab.
If you look at the illustration of the Tri-Coupler, you can see the air coupling on top. You can see the plug panel with air ports and electrical connections. It is mounted on compression springs, which load as the knuckle coupler makes, and thus hold and maintain the integrity of the air connection.
You can also see the cone on one side and a corresponding pin on the opposite side. When cars are coupled, the pins enter the cones. That feature/claim goes back at least 100 years. It is used on some transit couplers. The pins and cones are needed to gather the air couplers into perfect alignment of the air/electric
A lot of schemes have been proposed over the years. Sometimes it isn’t whether something can be done, but is it worth it?
Obviously, so far, it hasn’t. I doubt with current equipment and operations that it will ever be “worth it.” It’s something that might be more viable when equipment and operations are almost entirely semi-permanently coupled train sets that rarely uncouple.
Jeff
I agree. A lot of cars to retrofit …
Yes I agree that something like these hands-free couplings, ECP brakes, or automatic parking brakes will never be adopted for loose-car railroading. This is because every such improvement will need to be applied to every car in a short time, and those cars will vary in how much benefit comes from the improvement.
Once loose car railroading starts to give way to dedicated trainsets, that opens the door to vast improvements such as ECP brakes, powered train securement, derailment detectors, and trains without slack.
In regard to the hands-free couplers:
Also needed would be a remote controlled angle cock to complete the air coupler functionality. Also, I cannot see the details of the air/electric coupler, but when its two halves are coupled, the two halves must be locked into perfect alignment with each other, in order to assure the integrity of the air/electrical connections. So each air/electric coupler must be mounted to the car coupler on a flexible mechanism that allows the air/electric coupler to pivot on both a horizontal axis, and a vertical axis. Otherwise there would be enough differential movement in the two car couplers to interfere with the integrity of the air/electric connection.
Moreover, in each car joint, each air/electric coupler, each mounted to its respective car coupler by its dual axis motion linkage, must move at one with its mating air/electric coupler. So together, the mated pair of air/electric couplers must move as one in a way that allows them to accommodate the constant bouncing and rocking that is jostling both car couplers independently of each other.
Also, every time the slack runs in or out, the helical coil springs must compress or extend in order to accommodate that slack motion, so the air/electric couplers stay pressed firmly together. Also the spring pressure will change as the sprin
We’re a long way from getting rid of loose car railroading. Unless you want to get rid of a lot of the business railroads currently do. The Class 1’s have largely moved loose car handling into the realm of shortlines, but those cars still have to go from point A to point B, via the Class 1’s. Virtually all railroading, with the exception of true unit trains, like coal, coke, or certain liquids, is still loose car - even intermodal.
As for automatic uncoupling - one VERY important safety feature of the current arrangement is that if a brake hose parts, it dumps the emergency brake application. You have to find a way to maintain that functionality while at the same time alowing for Lionel-like automatic uncoupling.
The current arrangement is a vast improvement over link-and-pin, or even European buffers (which is really just link and pin). It’s reasonably simple, and it works. As we’ve seen with discussions of ECP, adding a level of complexity in the form of remote control of anything, is a stumbling block few want to tackle.
Various quite constructable designs capable of this have existed for over a century – consider how easy it would be to make a Scharfenberg coupler remotely operable.
If you have the 220V trainline for ECP, a two-motor system would be reasonably hackproof: one motor swings the ‘coupler servo’ into position and locks it; then the coupler servo manipulates the cut lever as brake foundations are actuated independently of the manual ‘securement’
I believe the Europeans have some cockamamie overdesigned automatic coupler that could be designed to separate blocks of cars, including autonomous railcars if anyone wants to throw money at, or down a hole regarding, that ‘potential market segment’.
Back in the late Sixties, NJ Transit (or whatever it was called then) put on an exhibition of their new Jersey Arrow MU cars. As a teen model railroader/railfan, that settled what I was doing that Saturday. I was impressed - modern, clean, comfortable, air conditioned - a far cry from the communter coaches I knew. But the thing that impressed me the most was that it had true automatic couplers. A rectangular box was beneath the knuckles, containing the brake pipe, signal pipe and MU couplings. The next Friday, when I was at the model railroad club, I told people what my impressions of the new cars were and I must have been very enthusiastic about the couplers. One of the old heads - I mean he was on a first name basis with Bill Walthers and Al Kalmbach - who had grown up riding interurbans in Ohio in the Thirties informed us that the technology was nothing new and he used to ride on cars equipped with such devices. So the technical problems have long since been solved. However, even at my tender age, I realized that equipping well over a million cars continent wide would be hugely expensive. My older friend pointed out that adoption of such a system as standard would be the biggest change to railroad cars since the Safety Appliance Act, and it would probably take a similar mandate to achieve.
From a Union standpoint who pushes the button to opeearate automatic uncoulpler? Engineer or Conductor? Can’t have cross crafting with seperate unions BLE vs TCU
I’ll go even deeper… While the C1’s hate to switch cars. Loose car (carload freight in general) is still the traffic that provides the highest margins. Intermodal is expensive due to all the moving parts involved with it; Dray cost, lift cost, switching cost, chassis availability, and other high operational cost… Last but not least, because intermodal is modal competitive means it produces less revenue.
One tenet of PSR was suppose to be the simplification of the loose car network. Hence driving margins higher on manifest traffic…Which modal competitive traffic can’t provide.
PSR is actively working for the ultimate simplification of the loose car network - its elimination on Class 1’s. If their service can drive customers to other forms of transportation PSR will have achieved its real goal.
We’re heading towards autonomous intelligent driverless trucks. Probably similar systems in railroading too. If cars and trucks, and even short strings of trucks, can be made to avoid one another on roads and highways, the same can be done with short consists of motorized railbourne containers or cars that carry shipments too heavy for asphalt. At that point you achieve a fully automated system and the need for motive power diminishes. Of course, all this works best on an overhead power configuration running with the pants up.
There is one issue about this hands-free “Tri-Coupler” being proposed by the FRA that I don’t see addressed. That is the alignment of the car couplers. Car couplers can become misaligned to the point where they will fail to make coupling when shoved together. Then some manual labor is necessary to adjust one or both coupler positions, and try the coupling again.
For the Tri-Coupler concept description, the following features are needed:
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Remote control angle cock.
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Remote control pin lifter.
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Automatic coupler for the brake pipe air connection.
Lasers and archimedes screws. That’s about the only way I can think of to make couplers smart. They have automated docking systems on unmanned supply vehicles arriving at the ISS. Why not automatically adjusting couplers?
It’s not that it can’t be done. It’s that it can’t be done economically. You’d have to retrofit hundreds of thousands of cars.
[quote user=“Euclid”]
There is one issue about this hands-free “Tri-Coupler” being proposed by the FRA that I don’t see addressed. That is the alignment of the car couplers. Car couplers can become misaligned to the point where they will fail to make coupling when shoved together. Then some manual labor is necessary to adjust one or both coupler positions, and try the coupling again.
For the Tri-Coupler concept description, the following features are needed:
-
Remote control angle cock.
-
Remote control pin lifter.
-
Automatic coupler for the brake pipe
Remote uncoupling between cars could be many years away, if ever. But remote uncoupling of helper locomotives from trains has already been a thing for more than a decade. It’s called Helper Link.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/devights/3697085292
http://burningjournal.activeboard.com/mobile.spark?p=topic&topic=40697885