Starting in the 1880s a high percentage of rails, and wheels, were supplied by Krupp Steel of Germany. This was curtailed during WW1, and again by WW2. An interesting read is “The Arms of Krupp”
herrinchoker
As discussed in other threads the knuckle is the fuse link in the system, designed to fail if there are excessive draft forces, in order to prevent damage to the far more expensive draft gear. If there is excessive failure, speak to the locomotive engineer about their train handling.
Do we see excessive failures in other imported components?
the AAR approval process requires review of the design, approval of the manufacturing process including metallurgy, and ongoing approval of the quality process (yearly inspections world wide) including possible removal of the quality certification if defective material is sold to an AAR interchange certified car shop.
you can’t just import any component you want, if it’s safety critical it needs to be AAR certified if it’s to b
Remember the photograph of the dangling drawbar and the commentary that followed?
Which would you rather have, that, and all that followed to get it get it back in place, or a broken knuckle, which can be replaced with far less effort and in far less time?
I’ve seen plenty of ugly knuckles in the past few years. Ones with big air pockets in them, or other metalurigcal imperfections that were painfully obvious. Not a train handling issue.
Here is the link to the earlier discussion …
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/248424.aspx
Edit: Since internal links do not activate.