I have some Roundhouse Harriman passenger cars, and some older Likelike boxcars with couplers attached to the trucks rather than to the underside of the car. Were there ever any prototypes constructed in this fashion, or is this a quick and inexpensive model construction method?
I worked for the Southren Pacific for a year or two I do’nt ever remember seeing couplers attached to the trucks,I do’nt think they ever were[2c]All of my R.R.cars that had the coupler on the truck have long been converted to frame mount.[^]
JIM
Not that I know of for one major reason. The draft gear is fastened to the center sill of the car designed to take the forces of pulling and pushing. The trucks aren’t even bolted to the car. There is a pin which fits into a hole in the top of the truck. Truck mounted couplers would just rip the truck out from under the car due the forces. Now trolley cars may be different due to the tight turns dictated by street running but I don’t think they used them either. They had a double jointed shank on the coupler or a very long shanked coupler from what I have seen
I’m not sure about the USA, but over here we’ve had a few locos with the coupling on the trucks (bogies) - there were two types of overhead electric loco used on the Woodhead line (the EM1 and EM2) which had the bogies coupled together mechanically at the inner ends and had buffing and drawgear fitted to them at the outer ends - the bodywork just sat on top with all forces transmitted through the bogies. There were also a few types where the bufferbeams were mounted on the bogies (Classes 40, 44, 45, and 46) rather than the bodywork.
I have seen a couple of Critter type locos that had truck mounted couplers, the trucks were also connected together. This was for very tight curves. As for passenger cars or frieght cars, never, this has to do with the pulling stresses of a train, if the couplers were mounted to the trucks, as soon as the train moved forward the pin holding the truck to the frame would be subjected to a great deal of cross tensional stress and would either deform or snap at the point of bearing.By mounting couplers to the frame the stresses of piuuling are tranfered linearly thru the frame to the car behind and so on and so on. the trucks only have to support the weight of the car.
We get truck mounted couplers because our trains are mostly operating on far from realistic radius’ curves, the tighter curved mean body mounted couplers would cause the cars to hit each other and derail on a tight corner. Plus the weights of our cars are soo light there is no real cross torsional stress like a multi-ton car would experience.
The Spani***algo designed cars may have had that arrangement. Those cars were used on a couple train sets back in the 1960’s but were very limited and never caught on.
Dave H.
There were several types of hevy electric locomotives that had what would be essentially truck-mounted couplers. Like the European example, all forces were transmitted throught he frame. In the case of articulated types, a drawbar connected the two sections. The bodies sort of just ride along on top. But I never heard of a freight car with truck-mounted couplers, for the reasons give. The trucks on prototypical freight cars aren’t really attached strongly to the car.
Of course,t e instant you say ‘never’ is when someone finds a picture of such a thing - so I’m going to qualify that with “they probably DID try it at some point or another”
–Randy
The only examples I can think of are where the “car” consists mostly of the truck. Disconnect logging cars. Those devices that connect a string of highway trailers to a train.
Possibly some heavy depressed center flatcars where the truck assemblies stuck out beyond the body.