Is anyone else’s BSometer pegged? Because mine finally just blew up.
Jeff
My BS meter has blown all of its safety valves - for a long, long time.
At least the border’s closed. He’s your problem, not ours.
As soon as a problem of a large magnitude occurs, and there are far less happenings that sometime rate as a large magnitude, they start marshalling the rescue forces. Sometimes with the cutbacks on the class ones those forces can be a lot farther out, in time and miles, than they used to be.
They might just have an engine, if available, attach to the back and have the conductor with that engine just turn the anglecock on the last car reachable off the bridge and drag the remainder off to where they can be reached. The conductor on the crippled train would probably have to do the same with the portion still attached. If the train broke on the bridge, both sections are likely still on the bridge. The only way to get to the separation without a walkway would be to crawl on hands and knees under the cars.
But, to heck with a broken knuckle. Lets make it really good, let’s say a damaged pin finally let go and they got a wrong end draw bar.
Jeff
Not on bridge with no walkway … but
Moved content
I’ve never seen a freight train moving that fast. I suspect that video was sped up.
Also, the way it was edited, to go to the clunky slo-mo for zeroing in on the break, makes it look, initially, like there were two breaks simultaneously. It took me a few viewings to realize it was just one.
The video is definitely sped up in some places, and slowed down in others.
I don’t see a broken drawbar, or even a broken knuckle. In fact, the knuckles are closed and intact on both cars. But look at how the drawbar is hanging on the trailing car. It would seem to me that this was a high/low situation, where one drawbar lifts up and out of the other.
And the needle is bent - but I keep a couple of spares on hand…
The broken ‘carrier iron’ allowing the entire drawbar and coupler to drop below the preceeding coupler.
Just put it on your shoulder and raise to to its proper height and then apply a bungee cord to hold it in place [/sarcasm]
I used to switch a customer who always got cars with tightlock couplers, and their site had some pretty uneven track. The difference in height between drawbars on loaded and empty cars was often enough that they wouldn’t couple together.
Our strategy was to lift up the low drawbar and stick an appropriately sized rock underneath it. Then the joint could be made.
Hey, if a person is strong enough to apply enough force to a handbrake wheel, certainly they could raise that drawbar with attached coupler to at least hold it in place with a roll of Duck Tape?
Are tightlock couplers shorter in vertical dimension than regular ones? Hence less “grab surface?”
The so called ‘tight lock’ couplers are the ones the have the ‘ears’ on the side without the knuckle pin. The ear fits into a receiver on the opposite coupler.
As can be seen, the couplers allow for a degree of difference between the couplers height above the top of rail and still make a successful coupling.
Referring to Balt’s photo, if the height difference is too great the ‘tip’ won’t be guided into the ‘ear’, instead it will just push on the top or bottom of the other drawbar.
Looks like coal cars in the photo, the air hoses are on the wrong sides. One car is facing the wrong way, neither of those drawbars are rotaries.
Well, this so-called BS comes only from TSB on your side of the border.
Thanks for all the comments. I, too, am not a railroader. I watch at a small yard where daily a manifest sets out cars for the yard job. The conducter cuts off the cars to be set out, leaves the main and crosses over into the yard. He shoves back and stops at the switch to the track where the cars will be left. Then I see him hold the train while he sets the hand brake on the three end cars, turning the wheel with very tight. Then shoves cars back on to the track, stays near the switch, cuts the engines off, never goes back with the end cars during the shove. I didn’t know if this was an infraction or not; it is done in full view of train master at times. Was wondering about this and wear on shoes and possible flat wheel tendency and if car owner gets the bill or no. Reason for my post.Size of cars set out averages 20-25 sometimes 40.
Northtowne
When I worked a transfer run from a CSX yard to a Conrail yard I got to watch a lot of Conrail trains while waiting for the CR dispatcher to let us return to CSX. I noticed that a large number of cars that had flat spots were cars with truck mounted brakes and that the flat spots were only on the B end or handbrake end of the car. This would seem to indicate that the flat spots were caused by moving the car with the handbrake applied.
Mark Vinski
Probably when empty.