I found a broken knuckle coupler. Is there a way to date or ID it? There some lettering on it that appears to have been molded on during the casting or forging.
TIA
cvt
You can tell if it’s an E or an F knuckle . No way to date it.
R
if it has an E or an F on it will tell you what type of knucke it is… other then that… your guess is as good as mine…
csx engineer
I see “AAR”, somthing that might be “(?)3”, “ASF”, “(?)G6(?)”, “H(T?)”, and “A” in an octagon. If there a single E or F on it it’s not visible in the pictures I took.
Where would the E or F appear?
cvt
Even if you offer to take it to a fancy restaurant?
Eric - Poo…[(-D]
Date a knucklehead and pretend he’s a knuckle coupler.
Dave Nelson
…On the subject of Knuckle coupler…and a bit off topic…Can someone in clear terms describe how the force is transmitted thru these couplers. I look at the connection and see a hinged piece on each that fits together when coupled but for the life of me, can’t see just what takes all that force…Tension and compression, applied thru it by the loaded consist.
Couplers are amazing…they take the sheer power and force of a train and for the most part hold it all together. And the most interesting thing is the thing that does this by holding it closed is a relatively insignificant pin that just drops down and sits there til manually lifted. I guess just the way it all works together is what does it.
…That’s partly my point…That insignificant pin can’t possibly take any of the massive force coming through the coupler. Those two hinged pieces must in some way wedge together to make a “solid” block connection within the coupler casting to take the load…But I sure am not certain in anyway that is what happens.
Amazing, isn’t it? That insignificant little pin does take some of the draft force, but not very much because of the leverage involved. Almost all of the force goes through the hinge pin instead, on which the outer part of the knuckle pivots to open and close. This hinge pin, which doesn’t look all that robust either, is loaded in what engineer’s (the PE kind, not the real kind) refer to as double shear rather than bending, and really is strong enough. Believe it or not…
In fact you can run a train normally with the knuckle pin completly gone, all that pin does is holds the knuckle in when it opens . One good thing to teach new guys is to stand clear of the knuckles in case the pin is broken or missing , causing the knuckle to drop out onto a foot !!
The actual draft pin is well inside the coupler , it drops down and acts as a wedge that fits between the knuckle and the draft head.
I will gladly furnish a knuckle to anyone who wants to buy an expensive dinner for one … as long as I get to watch you lug it in to the restaurant !!!
Found a knuckle coupler??? just laying on the floor at Popeyes?? Just how big are you to be able to pick up a knuckle coupler, they weigh in the hundreds of pounds, you didn’t happen to be in the vicinity of railroad did you . I think we need a little more information here.
…Anyone else out there care to give a discription of how force is carried through one railroad coupler to the connecting mate…I’ve checked photos in Google, etc…but still don’t see the path the force is carried through the assembly.
I probably won’t get my hands on a coupler for a month or better… I do see a groove in the knuckle - might be a factor.
Geez, Randy, doesn’t the world have enough knuckle draggers already without your offer?
And no, I am not referring to conductors dealing with break-in-two situations, as I believe the protocol explained on the forum is to drop a good knuckle off of one of the units, pull the front half forward and then rest the good knuckle on some convenient surface as the cars are shoved back to the rest of the train, then wrestle the exchange there. Not much knuckle dragging there, at least. Still doesn’t sound like fun to me, which is why I was a PE type engineer, instead of the railroad flavor. (Still registered, just in case.)
…Thanks Tree…I’ll keep looking for more illustrative photos and maybe I’ll finally get to understand the mechanics of it. It just seems one aspect of the mechanics of railroading I can’t get a handle on to understand.
That is an interesting question. I have certainly opened and closed a lot of couplers, but I could not draw an accurate picture from memory of what goes on between the knuckle and the coupler pin. I do know that the whole coupler disassembles like a puzzle. Like most mechanical devices that have been used and perfected over a long period of time, the automatic railroad coupler strikes me as a truly elegant work of art. It ranks right up there with the freight car truck.
I always admired the way you could pull the pin and it would hold that released state on its own, as well as the way you could open the knuckle by pulling the pin if you pull it fast and hard. And I always wondered why some pins, especially the top-pull pins, would sometimes fail to hold the pulled state on their own. Was it a matter of internal wear?
Someone pointed out above, that the knuckle pin merely serves to hold the knuckle in place when it is open and disengaged from the coupler pin, as well as the convincing hazard of pulling the coupler pin when the knuckle pin is missing, grabbing the knuckle to open it, and having it fall on your toe.
I had never thought about this issue of the knuckle pin’s function before. I guess I always assumed that it was part of the load carrying mechanism. Is it true that a pair of mated couplers with the coupler pins locked, could transmit the pulling load with their knuckle pins missing? I could see thi
It’s called a “Janney” coupler. We still use it with only very minor improvements. This is what I found:
The following extracts comes from United States Supreme Court decision - Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Hiles (95-6), 516 U.S. 400 (1996) and provides historical background and development of the automatic car coupler:
Railroad Car Couplers
Railroad cars in a train are connected by couplers located at both ends of each car. A coupler consists of a knuckle joined to the end of a drawbar, which itself is fastened to a housing mechanism on the car. A knuckle is a clamp that interlocks with its mate, just as two cupped hands–placed palms together with the fingertips pointing in opposite directions–interlock when the fingers are curled. When cars come together, the open knuckle on one car engages a closed knuckle on the other car, automatically coupling the cars. The drawbar extends the knuckle out from the end of the car and is designed to pivot in its housing, allowing the knuckled end some lateral play to prevent moving cars from derailing on a curved track.
For most of the nineteenth century, the link and pin coupler was the standard coupler used to hook together freight cars. It consisted of a tubelike body that received an oblong link. During coupling, a railworker had to stand between the cars as they came together and guide the link into the coupler pocket. Once the cars were joined, the employee inserted a pin into a hole a few inches from the end of the tube to hold the link in place. The link and pin coupler, though widely used, ultimately proved unsatisfactory…
Janney Coupler
In 1873, Eli H. Janney patented a knuckle style
To Bucyrus and tangerine-jack, thanks for your illustrations of coupler operations and info…I’m gaining on it…