Can someone tell me more about Southern’s Super Cushion Service? After long last I managed to finally photograph one, NS 451341, today. The only thing was that they had painted over the “Gives a green light to innovation” side. It was just peaking through the paint. It also had been renumbered with a NS.
But my question is why did Sou come up with this scheme? How are they different from the regular Southern Serves The South cars?
We covered this before, and you might be able to find the threads.
Super cushion service is like hydra-cushion: the SRI-style long-travel hydraulic underframes that control slack run-in and run-out and damp out longitudinal shock.
Has nothing whatsoever to do with the ride, either with respect to spring rate or damping. Plain ordinary trucks with plain ordinary pivots on them.
Giveaway is the extended center sill and coupler attachment, which gives a larger distance between cars (when running with slack drawn out). Imho a valuable feature when transporting things: longitudinal shock is almost certainly more damaging in many respects than any form of road shock transmitted through the suspension…