There is plenty of information about when link and pin couplers were phased out, but I have been unable to find anything about when they started being used. Is there any difinitive answer? Thank you.
Check your library for history books: railroads, transportation, general.
Obviously when the rope or chain was found to not be useful as a link for connecting cars. The slack in a rope or chain would allow the cars to slam together.
Don’t forget, horses or mules where used to pull cars before the loco was invented. Many horses or mules could be teamed together.
Rich
Hi Lloyd2,
There is a two volume book called The American Railroad Passenger Car written by John H White Jr., who is the Curator of Transportation with the Smithsonian Institute. He dedicates an entire chapter on the history of the coupler’s development in American. He states that the link and pin coupler’s originated in the early to mid 1830’s, he had problems determining an exact date (pg 560) and a drawing by the B&O using them was dated 1835. If your interested in such rail development I highly recommend this book, you can get paper back versions on E-bay rather cheaply.
Actually,technically Chain is still used as a coupling method on many (non-North American) railroads even today.
BTW, while that wiki page gives no history of the Link & Pin coupler, it does detail some of the interesting pitfalls associated w/ it.