Subject:
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Re: Coal Car Question
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:15:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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656 times
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In lugnet.trains, John Neal writes:
>
>
> Larry Pieniazek wrote:
>
> >
> > Note that in the prototype, often a cut of cars is rotated *in place*, that
> > is, while still coupled in the train. This requires that one of the coupler
> > shafts on each car swivel so the cars can remain coupled. Hence, sometimes
> > you will see lettering on the ends that say "rotary coupler end" to show
> > which end has it (you only need one end to have it if you keep the cars
> > aligned correctly and the small savings in capital cost apparently is enough
> > to offset the operational PITA to keep the car ends facing all the same way).
>
> So I'm thinking that the Coalporter's dramatic and unusual color schemes >would be
> for easily identifying the rotary coupler end? Just a guess.
Sort of.
When you look at a particular car, what you want to do is identify *what*
unit train it belongs in... because in many cases the cars are owned by the
utility company, or at least, are covered by a exclusive use contract. So
you don't want to mix cars from different customers.
Hence you want to come up with a scheme that is unique to that service so
the shipper is happy that you're not misusing his cars. Once you're doing
that, it *does* make sense to make the scheme directionally asymetric so you
can tell which end is which, and further, that you can tell from a great
distance whether any cars are misaligned before you feed a misaligned car
into a rotary and shear a coupler drawbar off or break a knuckle by trying
to rotate an incorrectly aligned car.
Note ALSO that if the dumper can take more than one car, you can
semipermanently connect cars into blocks of the dumper length using drawbars
instead of actual couplers.
++Lar
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Coal Car Question
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| (...) So I'm thinking that the Coalporter's dramatic and unusual color schemes would be for easily identifying the rotary coupler end? Just a guess. -John (...) (24 years ago, 20-Apr-01, to lugnet.trains)
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