I’m now accumulating cars to assemble pre-war consist (the Portland Rose) and I’ve found out that they used a car within the consist that was called a “buffer”.Can someone tell me what this car was,what purposes it served and where a can find a picture to know what it looked like?Thanks.
Are you sure it wasn’t a mistyped buffet? Buffers are those round, spring-loaded things on the end sills of European cars. A buffet car is a lunch counter on rails.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Perhaps the more common terms for such a car are a club or lounge car. Personally, I’d gladly have a hamburger-grill car now and pay you back Tuesday or Wednesday. Also, I’d prefer an all-day-lunch car over a news-agent car. But if you offered a solarium-lounge car with bar, I couldn’t refuse. “Steward, please make an appointment for me with the barber.”
Mark
Well,I don’t know.I got this info from an excellent article in the Streamliner (UPHS’s magazine).Perhaps it was a misprint,but it is indeed a “buffer” with no other precision in the texts.A buffet would make sense indeed,but would they have such a car when they already had a diner,even two depending on wich part of the train’s course.
Where within the consist does it appear?
Enjoy
Paul
A buffer is “something in between” - a spacer or dampener.
I suppose a “buffer car” in this context could be a RR car put between the engine and the first passenger car - maybe to get engine noise further away from passengers, or a car separating first and second class or some such thing.
Hard to say without sufficient context.
Grin,
Stein
In many passenger trains even into the Amtrak era a Buffer was a baggage car or in some cases even a locked coach between the power and the passenger carrying cars in a passenger train. Not necessary in trains such as those in the Northeast corridor where they have ATS or similar.
Al - in - Stockton
This picture from the Bluebell railway in the UK shows silver British/European style buffers. They were also used on cars and engines and sometimes on end-of-track bumpers. When coupling up the cars you would move the cars so the buffers touched, then a trainman would go between the cars and connect a big chain to the hooks at the end of the cars (between the buffers in the pic). The buffers are sprung so they give, but can be adjusted to be stiffer like on a passenger train so that the cars don’t have any (or very little) slack action.
http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/~uhaa009/bb/pics/003/003na008q.jpg
I would suspect it’s being used in your story as a car that would block certain passengers from going any farther one direction or the other on a train.
As someone noted, a train carrying passengers with express or mail cars at the front might have a locked car that prevented regular passengers from going forward to the head-end cars where the valuable express and mail was located.
Also, railroads sometimes used a dining car to separate classes of passengers. A typical train might start with a baggage car, then have several coaches, then a diner, then several Pullman cars and finally an observation car at the rear. Coach class passengers could go back as far as the diner to eat, but couldn’t go back to the rear of the train where the first-class Pullman passengers were. In that sense the diner would act as a ‘buffer’ between classes. However, on some trains, the coach passengers might only have access to a buffet or lunch-counter car or something similar, and only the first class sleeping-car patrons could use the regular dining ca
I have seen, but cannot recall where, the term buffer to refer to a car which served both first class and coach customers, with the end of the car having a sign such as “first class passengers only beyond this point” – this kept coach fare people from wandering through sleepers and lounge and dome cars that others had paid extra for. An example would be a diner or buffet or smoking lounge car. I don’t know whether this buffer term is one the railroads used themselves.
Another possibility – I don’t know much about the Portland Rose, particularly prewar – is where a train would be split at some station and become two trains and you need to keep the passengers separated by destination.
On freight trains buffer cars are used for safety purposes – that is why today you’ll see an empty covered hopper after the locomotive and before the tank cars of a unit train of ethanol. Often a buffer car would be placed between a tank car and the caboose back in the day.
Dave Nelson
Union Pacific installed tender buffers to several Atlantics and Pacifics, basically a steel plate which extended the full height of the tank end designed to fully contact the diaphram of the first car, the theory was this would provide stability at high speeds, in practice, it proved ineffective and all were removed by the mid twenties.
Dave
One point no one has mentioned is that North American passenger cars also have buffers! Not the big round spring loaded ones like European equipment, but the plate frame at the meeting face of diaphragms between the cars is also called the buffer, or buffer plate! The diaphragm itself is the fabric accordian membrane between the buffer and the carbody end. John
Hello Jacktal
This may be of absolutely no help whatsoever, but here goes:
If a locomotive is too heavy or too long to negotiate a spur, a car - or several cars - are placed between it and the car to be spotted. Maybe on some carriers these are referrred to as “buffers” (there is a reference to this practice in John Armstrong’s Track Planning for Realistic Operation but my copy is 500 miles away on vacation).
Does this help at all? [%-)]
Warmest regards
Bill
I’m still confused as to what a buffer car was,but won’t lose my sleep over it though.However,I’m still curious to know so I’ll add some infos that may…I say may…help someone to turn on my lights.Studying the flowchart that comes with the article about the Portland Rose train,it is most evident that this is not an easy train to reproduce accurately,in fact impossible I might say.
When the Portland Rose arrived in Portland,it was most times a two part train (1-17 and 2-17),1-17 being a 15 car consist and 2-17 a 7 car train.However,when it had originally started from Denver,it was called train no.17 and also featured 15 cars but not the same 15 cars.The PR changed its physionomy a few times along the road with it’s biggest changes happening in Cheyenne where it gets litterally split in two and accepts cars from trains 7 and 27 from Chicago wich are diverted in both trains 1-17 and 2-17.So none of the original consists from Denver and Chicago retained its original consisting.
Now,the “buffer” car I’m referring to was part of the consist that originated from Chicago (likely within a C&NW consist) and was one of the only four cars that made the whole journey from Chicago to Portland to end up in the 1-17 train,other Chicago originating cars being shuffled to train 2-17.Unfortunately,I can’t supply any more infos,but,even if I never get to know what a buffer car was,I’m absolutely thrilled by this research.Learning is fun…indeed.
Part of the problem is I suspect the author of what you read wasn’t using the term “buffer” in a technical sense, since it’s not a real railroad term (except for buffers between cars). That is, Amtrak couldn’t go to Pullman Standard or Bombardier and say “build us 10 coaches, 2 baggage cars, and 6 buffer cars”. There’s no such thing as a “buffer car” per se.
As has been suggested, he was probably using “buffer” in the more general sense of something you use to keep two things apart - like someone planning a formal dinner party saying “Tom and John always end up arguing politics if they sit next to each other, so I sat Mary between them as a buffer”. They may have just been saying that a car was put into the consist to act as a “buffer” to keep first class and coach passengers apart, or passengers going to different destinations apart, or because the train was later going to have cars removed or added etc. It could have been a coach or a dining car or a baggage car or something else acting as a buffer.
Well, Amtrak actually has a few cars that is labeled “Buffer car” on the side. Amtrak 10404 is (or at least was a couple of years ago) used as a transition car between low and high level cars on the “Hoosier State” service. I’ve also seen pictures of Amtrak 10405 being labeled “Buffer car” on the side.
Often a rebuilt or partially gutted old baggage or coach car - such cars are not ordered new - you use leftovers to make em if you need em.
Grin,
Stein
“Baggage Car for the Santa Fe Railway, later to Amtrak as a Baggage Car. The car is now used as a buffer car for hauling single and high level cars back and forth to Beech Grove in a single train.”
http://www.trainweb.org/amtrakpix/locoshots/baggage/10404A.html
Although it still doesn’t explain what a buffer car was in pre-WW2 Union Pacific trains??
True.
Maybe the original poster of this thread ought to take his question over to the classic trains forum and ask over there - might be a better chance of finding someone over there who knows more about pre-WW2 Union Pacific passenger train practices ?
Smile,
Stein
Just for the record…
European/UK style side buffers are either self contained or have a spring system beind the buffer beam. The spring or springs are not adjustable. (I don’t have a clue what the loading they deal with is but the size of the springs is such that they are way beyond adjusting by hand at trackside)
Coupling side buffered stock…
Buffer up (push the stock together) and swing the coupling links into place… They are specific couplings not chains. In early times some stock had “safety chains” in addition to the regular couplings. These would be on the buffer beam on each side of the coupling hook about mid way to the buffers. They were pretty much out of use by 1900.
The pic shows what look like self contained buffers and the hook that the coupling link couples into… it also shows the first link of a “screw link coupling” hanging down. As far as I can see the screw link is missing.