I remember when watching the Thomas the Tank Engine TV series as kid, a common trope is that passanger cars have to be handled genlty and more carefully then freight cars, as they can be handled more roughly if need be.
I suppose the logic is that, because passanger cars carry people along with the food stuff, fragile silver and glasswear and eating utensils needed for Gordons (the big engine, #4 of the North Western Railway) express, it needs he be handled carefully do nothing becomes upset and at a good smooth speed, the ride is not uncomfertable.
However I have to ask how this applies to real life railroad passanger and freight opperations in North America, Britian and the rest of the world. Shouldnt both passanger and freight cars be treated the same?
I mean if you handle one more roughly then the other, you wear the rolling stock out much faster. Not to mention, many freight cars carry fragile vanualbles such as class bottles, automobiles that even when well packaged and shock insullated, are still fragile to the whims of the freight cars movments.
Perishable or fragile freight can easily be damaged, which is probably one of the reasons we don’t haul a huge amount of that stuff in boxcars anymore. Modern North American intermodal equipment has very little slack compared to regular freight cars, and the older ‘buffers & chain’ coupling system found on the Island of Sodor has even more slack.
When freight is damaged it can be very difficult to trace exactly where it happened. So it is very difficult to assign certain blame to the crew and train who did it.
I grew up reading and watching the Thomas stories, and also had a large collection of the wooden toys. Now I work for a real railroad. Ever since I started working I’ve been stunned at just how accurate so many of Rev. Awdry’s stories are, especially from the other side of the Atlantic.
Remember - in handling occupied passenger equipment, the passengers may be standing and/or walking about the car as it is being switched/coupled to other cars. The object of making a safe passenger car coupling is not to know anyone off their feet.
Freight cars have their ‘occupants’ (lading) blocked and braced to prevent movement when subjected to the normal impacts of rail transportation. The ‘safe’ coupling speed for freight cars is considered to be 4 MPH or the speed of a ‘brisk’ walk. Such a impact with a occupied passenger car would knock anyone standing/walking right off their feet.
4 mph might be considered ‘safe’, but it’s still pretty darn rough. When coupling locomotives to cars the Engineer will REALLY feel anything harder than about 1 mph, I try to aim for a bit less to give myself an easier ride.
Slightly off topic; for some time I have had the opinion that back when railroads ran their own passenger trains it was partly as a form of advertising for their freight service: if an executive or salesman for company XYZ Mfg. received a smooth ride and on time arrival when traveling to a call on a client/customer he would feel that his boxcars full of (fill in the blank) would receive similar treatment. Of course, all those “commercial travelers” migrated to the airlines.
Then you’d get on power with all the cabinet doors and windows opened, cooler tossed all over the cab, bottles of water in the ceiling, and be like, “yep this was used with remote engines.”
A guy managed to warp one pretty badly in Winnipeg a few years ago, he made a hard joint and then the unit refused to move. Another crew looked over to see that the inside axle on each truck was up in the air and spinning freely, which the control system interpreted as a uncontrolled wheelslip alarm.
A couple of years ago the wife and I took Amtrak from Iowa to California and back. On the trip back at Denver they had to pick up some private cars on the end of the train. It took three tries to get the pin to drop.
One time there was a RC engine that not only had the side window opened, but had one that was knocked off it’s track and on the floor.
My knowledge is that passenger cars don’t get kicked - even if unoccupied. All movements are coupled, under control.
Running around the consist is a regular part of our local runs. One end is with no passengers (but possibly staff) on the train.
The other end is with an occupied train, and often with passengers watching from the vestibule. The passenger cars are tied down during both.
Thus, every effort is made for a smooth coupling. Some engineers are smother than others, and sometimes the crewmember on the ground calling in the hitch is a little off on their distances, too.
One engineer was very proud of how he came in one time - in fact, he came in too ‘nicely’ and I had to back him up and have him come in again, just a bit harder, to get the pin to drop.
Never watched a lot of Thomas, and when I did, it was before I was volunteering on the railroad, so the context was lost.
On the other hand, I did get to serve as “Driver” on one of the replica (unpowered) Thomases during an event on our railroad. In reality, it was just a fancy shove platform…
Engineer that couples to a track at 4 MPH has only himself or the individual that is ‘spotting’ the coupling to blame for going a…hole over teacups at 4 MPH.
The 4 MPH coupling for freight cars is for ‘free rolling’ cars, either being kicked in flat switching of coming off a hump into the final class track.
Railroads, in concert with their customers, install impact detectors which record the impacts a shipment gets in transit - both switching and line of road impacts. Most carriers have a ‘Freight Loss & Damage’ department that works to make customers whole for railroad caused loss and damage and they also work to devise methods to minimize the damage to products in transit.
4’s rough, but you’re not going to break anything. And yeah, sometimes rough couplings happen. Esp if you’re shifting without air, or on a grade, or in the rain, or with a newer conductor.
I was in Lynchburg, VA a few years ago for work. One evening I found the entrance to an NS yard adjacent to a mall. I sat outside the gate for a while, watching a yard crew work.
They would kick a car down the appropriate yard track. A few seconds later, in the distance, in the dark, you’d hear “WHAM.” Rinse, repeat.
Necessary evil when you have sharp curves to traverse, even with comparatively short little waggons. Note the position of the ‘turnbuckle’ tightening device in the link – no amount of drawing up will even put the freight buffers in contact, and that’s a good thing.
In practice, the ‘thing to do’ would be to use a nominally shorter link, and just wind it off to create the necessary slack to allow buffered waggons to negotiate a tight curve without pushing into derailment. Also in practice, I wouldn’t expect any British trainman with a shop steward worth his salt to waste time cranking or dealing with the consequences of not doing so…
I never read the original books that the Rev. Awdrys wrote that inspired the TV series I grew up with, but I have to ask, what do you mean of how accurate they are to real world railroading?
I also have to ask what replaced the chain/hook coupling on modern british and eurpoean railroading? I do know buffers are still used.
