1.
Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal
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Ladysmith is a town in the Uthukela District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is 230 kilometres north-west of Durban and 365 kilometres south of Johannesburg, important industries in the area include food processing, textile and tyre production. Tyres are produced by Sumitomo Rubber South Africa in the town of Steadville. Ladysmith is the seat for both the Alfred Duma Local Municipality and the Uthukela District Municipality, in 1847 after buying land from the Zulu king Mpande, a number of Boers settled in the area and called it the Republic of Klip River with Andries Spies as their commandant. The republic was annexed by the British in the same year, on 11 October 1850 the name was changed to Ladysmith after Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith also known as Lady Smith, the Spanish wife of Sir Harry Smith, the Governor of the Cape Colony. Sir Harry Smith was the British general governor of Cape Colony, a fort was built in 1860 to protect the villagers from the Zulu. During the Second Boer War British commander Lieutenant General Sir George White made Ladysmith his centre of operations for the protection of Natal against the Boer forces. Following the Battle of Ladysmith, whilst British forces under Lieutenant General Sir George White regrouped in the town, the siege lasted 118 days, from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900, during the most crucial stage of the war. Approximately 3,000 British soldiers died during the siege, three attempts by General Sir Redvers Buller to break the siege resulted in defeat for the British forces at the battles of Colenso, Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz. On 6 January 1900 the Boer forces of Commandant-General Piet Joubert attempted to end the siege by taking the town before the British could launch another attempt to break the siege and this led to the battle of Platrand south of the town. Buller finally broke the siege on 28 February 1900 after defeating the Boers by using close cooperation between his infantry and artillery. Sir Winston Churchill, then a war correspondent for The Morning Post, was present at the Relief of Ladysmith after having been taken prisoner. Mohandas Gandhi and the corps that he established earlier during the war was involved in a number of actions that took place in. Ladysmith is located on the banks of the Klip River, with the business district. It is on the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains, about 26 km from the Van Reenen pass, since it was established the town has suffered severely from flooding of the Klip River. During the 110 years up to 1997 with the completion of the Qedusizi Dam,29 serious floods have occurred, minor flooding occurred almost every year. The worst flooding in 30 years occurred in 1996 leading to R500 million in damages, efforts to control the flooding date back to the 1940s. In 1949 the Windsor Dam was completed, but this dam silted up very fast and was not a means of flood control
2.
Electro-Motive Diesel
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Electro-Motive Diesel is an American manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives, locomotive products and diesel engines for the rail industry. The company is owned by Caterpillar through its subsidiary Progress Rail Services Corporation, in 1930, General Motors purchased Electro-Motive Company and the Winton Engine Co. combining the two to form its Electro-Motive Division in 1941. In 2005, GM sold EMD to Greenbriar Equity Group and Berkshire Partners, in 2010, Progress Rail Services completed the purchase of Electro-Motive Diesel from Greenbriar, Berkshire, and others. EMDs headquarters, engineering facilities and parts manufacturing operations are based in McCook, Illinois, while its final assembly line is located in Muncie. EMD also operates a traction motor maintenance, rebuild and overhaul facility in San Luis Potosí, as of 2008, EMD employed approximately 3,260 people, and in 2010 it held approximately 30 percent of the market for diesel-electric locomotives in North America. Harold L. Hamilton and Paul Turner founded the Electro-Motive Engineering Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, the company developed and marketed self-propelled railcars using General Electrics newly developed internal combustion-electric propulsion and control systems. Hamilton started his career as a fireman, then locomotive engineer, on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Financing himself, he quit his sales position and set up shop in a hotel with his partner. In 1923 EMC sold two gasoline-powered rail motor cars, one to the Chicago Great Western and the other to the Northern Pacific, EMC subcontracted the body construction to St. Louis Car Company, electrical components to General Electric, and the prime mover to Winton Engine Company. The motorcars were delivered in 1924 and worked well, fortunate for the fledgling company, in 1925, EMC entered full-scale production, selling 27 railcars. In 1930 General Motors was seeking to improve their Diesel technology and they purchased the Winton Engine Company who, in addition to their Diesel products, sold non-Diesel engines for EMC-developed rail motorcars. The combined resources of GM and their new Winton subsidiary were focused on developing Diesel engines with improved power-to-weight ratios, GM saw EMCs role in marketing and applications development as fitting their objectives and purchased the company shortly after the Winton acquisition, renaming it Electro-Motive Corporation. In 1933 EMC designed the power setups for the Zephyr and M-10000 streamliners, the Zephyr used the first major product of the new GM-Winton venture, the 600 hp Winton 201A 2-stroke Diesel engine. Encouraged by the success of the new streamliners, EMC invested in a new locomotive factory. The new headquarters on 55th Street in McCook, Illinois, west of Chicago, in 1938 EMC started production of locomotives using GMs new 567 engine, which upgraded the horsepower to 2000 per locomotive unit and increased reliability. The 567, named for its displacement-per-cylinder of 567.45 in³, was a two-cycle Roots-blown, Uniflow-scavenged, Unit-injected engine with overhead camshafts and it was built as a V-6, V-8, V-12 and V-16. Charles F. Kettering and the General Motors Research Corporation were in charge of its development and their nearest competitor was the American Locomotive Company, who started production of less-developed Diesel locomotives to compete with the E-units in 1939. Baldwins response to the challenge of the E-units was to develop a steam locomotive design that pushed beyond the limits of practicality, passenger trains made little money for the railroads, but replacement of steam engines with reliable Diesel units could provide railroads with a crucial difference for profitability
3.
Argentina
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Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a federal republic in the southern half of South America. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the second largest in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking one. The country is subdivided into provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system, Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The earliest recorded presence in the area of modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century, Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world by the early 20th century, Argentina retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs, and is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America and is a member of the G-15 and it is the country with the second highest Human Development Index in Latin America with a rating of very high. Because of its stability, market size and growing high-tech sector, the description of the country by the word Argentina has to be found on a Venice map in 1536. In English the name Argentina probably comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, Argentina means in Italian of silver, silver coloured, probably borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine of silver > silver coloured already mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the form of argentin and derives of argent silver with the suffix -in. The Italian naming Argentina for the country implies Argentina Terra land of silver or Argentina costa coast of silver, in Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is often used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said lArgentina. The name Argentina was probably first given by the Venitian and Genoese navigators, in Spanish and Portuguese, the words for silver are respectively plata and prata and of silver is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin. The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region, the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name Argentine Republic in legal documents. The name Argentine Confederation was also used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the name as Argentine Republic
4.
Bo-Bo
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B-B and Bo-Bo are the AAR and UIC classifications of wheel arrangement for railway locomotives with four axles in two individual bogies. It is a wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel locomotives. Bo-Bo is the UIC indication of an arrangement for railway vehicles with four axles in two individual bogies, all driven by their own traction motors. It is a wheel arrangement for modern electric and diesel-electric locomotives. Most early electric locomotives shared commonalities with the engines of their time. These features included side rods and frame mounted driving axles with leading and trailing axles, the long rigid wheelbase and the leading and trailing axles reduced cornering stability and increased weight. The Bo-Bo configuration allowed for higher cornering speeds due to the rigid wheelbase. Furthermore, it allowed better adhesion because all the wheels were now powered, due to the absence of frame mounted wheels no leading or trailing axles were necessary to aid cornering, reducing weight and maintenance requirements. Due to the advent of modern motors and electronics more power can be brought to the rail with only a few axles, modern electric locomotives can deliver up to 6400 kW on only four axles. The B′B′ or B-B arrangement is similar, but applies to diesel-hydraulic locomotives rather than diesel-electrics, the axles on each bogie are coupled together mechanically, rather than being driven by individual traction motors. Diesel-hydraulics have their engine mounted on the frame of the locomotive. Power is then transmitted to the bogies by cardan shafts and a short driveshaft between axles, a common example of this is the German V200 design and its many international derivatives. The need to arrange the bogie suspension around the shafts led to an unusual bogie design with radius arms rather than hornblocks and so prominently visible wheels. In some rare examples, such as the narrow-gauge ÖBB2095, having only a single final-drive per bogie allows more room for the bogie pivots on this narrow-gauge design. With high power locomotives, splitting the drive directly to two axles is preferred, as it only requires a less powerful final drive gearbox. In AAR notation a Bo-Bo is regarded as a B-B because the AAR system does not take traction motors into consideration, an AAR-like notation is used in France too, making it hard to tell the B-B and Bo-Bo engines apart, both of which are common there. Railcars and multiple units use similar two-axle powered bogies and many of them use similar hydraulic or mechanical transmissions, however railcars are also lightweight and do not require all axles to be powered in order to gain adequate adhesion. They thus use an arrangement of 1A-A1 rather than B-B
5.
Track gauge
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In rail transport, track gauge is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a network must have running gear that is compatible with the track gauge, as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still frequently used as a descriptor of a route or network. There is a distinction between the gauge and actual gauge at some locality, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, the nominal track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the rails. In current practice, it is specified at a distance below the rail head as the inner faces of the rail head are not necessarily vertical. In some cases in the earliest days of railways, the company saw itself as an infrastructure provider only. Colloquially the wagons might be referred to as four-foot gauge wagons, say and this nominal value does not equate to the flange spacing, as some freedom is allowed for. An infrastructure manager might specify new or replacement track components at a variation from the nominal gauge for pragmatic reasons. Track is defined in old Imperial units or in universally accepted metric units or SI units, Imperial units were established in United Kingdom by The Weights and Measures Act of 1824. In addition, there are constraints, such as the load-carrying capacity of axles. Narrow gauge railways usually cost less to build because they are lighter in construction, using smaller cars and locomotives, as well as smaller bridges, smaller tunnels. Narrow gauge is often used in mountainous terrain, where the savings in civil engineering work can be substantial. Broader gauge railways are generally expensive to build and require wider curves. There is no single perfect gauge, because different environments and economic considerations come into play, a narrow gauge is superior if ones main considerations are economy and tight curvature. For direct, unimpeded routes with high traffic, a broad gauge may be preferable, the Standard, Russian, and 46 gauges are designed to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. In addition to the general trade-off, another important factor is standardization, once a standard has been chosen, and equipment, infrastructure, and training calibrated to that standard, conversion becomes difficult and expensive. This also makes it easier to adopt an existing standard than to invent a new one and this is true of many technologies, including railroad gauges. The reduced cost, greater efficiency, and greater economic opportunity offered by the use of a common standard explains why a number of gauges predominate worldwide
6.
3 ft 6 in gauge railways
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Railways with a track gauge of 3 ft 6 in/1,067 mm were first constructed as horse-drawn wagonways. From the mid-nineteenth century, the 3 ft 6 in gauge became widespread in the British Empire, there are approximately 112,000 kilometres of 1,067 mm gauge track in the world. 1795 One of the first railways to use 3 ft 6 in gauge was the Little Eaton Gangway in England, other 3 ft 6 in gauge wagonways in England and Wales were also built in the early nineteenth century. 1862 In 1862 the Norwegian engineer Carl Abraham Pihl constructed the first 3 ft 6 in gauge railway in Norway,1865 In 1865 the Queensland Railways were constructed. Its 3 ft 6 in gauge was promoted by the Irish engineer Abraham Fitzgibbon,1868 In 1868 Charles Fox asks civil engineer Edmund Wragge to survey a 3 ft 6 in railway in Costa Rica. 1871 In 1871 the Canadian Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway,1872 In January 1872 Robert Fairlie advocated the use of 3 ft 6 in gauge in his book Railways Or No Railways, Narrow Gauge, Economy with Efficiency v. Broad Gauge, Costliness with Extravagance. 1872 also saw the opening of the first 3 ft 6 in gauge railway in Japan,1873 On 1 January 1873, the first 3 ft 6 in gauge railway was opened in New Zealand, constructed by the British firm John Brogden and Sons. Earlier built 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in and broad gauge railways were converted to the narrower gauge. Also in 1873 the Cape Colony adopted the 3 ft 6 in gauge, after conducting several studies in southern Europe, the Molteno Government selected the gauge as being the most economically suited for traversing steep mountain ranges. Beginning in 1873, under supervision of Railway engineer of the Colony William Brounger, the Cape Government Railways rapidly expanded and the gauge became the standard for southern Africa. 1876 Natal also converted its short 10 kilometres long Durban network from 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in broad gauge prior to commencing with construction of a network across the colony in 1876. Other new railways in Southern Africa, notably Mozambique, Bechuanaland, after 1876 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century numerous 3 ft 6 in gauge tram systems were built in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In Sweden, the gauge was nicknamed Blekinge gauge, as most of the railways in the province of Blekinge had this gauge. An alternate name for this gauge, Cape gauge, is named after the Cape Colony in what is now South Africa, the term Cape Gauge is used in other languages, such as the Dutch kaapspoor, German Kapspur, Norwegian kappspor and French voie cape. After metrication in the 1960s, the gauge was referred to in official South African Railways publications as 1065 mm instead of 1067 mm, the gauge is sometimes referred to as CAP gauge, after C. A. The gauge name Colonial Gauge was used in New Zealand, in Australia the imperial term 3 foot 6 inch is used. In some Australian publications the term medium gauge is also used, in Japan 1,067 mm gauge is referred to as kyōki, which directly translates as narrow gauge. It is defined in metric units, Cape Government Railways Heritage railway List of track gauges Norwegian gauge controversy South African Trains – A Pictorial Encyclopaedia Why Did Japan Choose the 36 Narrow Gauge
7.
Bogie
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A bogie is a chassis or framework carrying wheels, attached to a vehicle, thus serving as a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transport, while bogie is the preferred spelling and first-listed variant in various dictionaries, bogey and bogy are also used. A bogie in the UK, or a truck, wheel truck. In Indian English, bogie may also refer to a railway carriage. In South Africa, the bogie is often alternatively used to refer to a freight or goods wagon. The first standard gauge British railway to build coaches with bogies, an alternate configuration often is used in articulated vehicles, which places the bogies under the connection between the carriages or wagons. Most bogies have two axles, but some cars designed for heavy loads have more axles per bogie, heavy-duty cars may have more than two bogies using span bolsters to equalize the load and connect the bogies to the cars. Suspension to absorb shocks between the frame and the rail vehicle body, Common types are coil springs, or rubber airbags. At least one wheelset, composed of an axle with bearings and a wheel at each end The bolster, the railway car is supported at the pivot point on the bolster. Axle box suspensions absorb shocks between the bearings and the bogie frame. The axle box suspension usually consists of a spring between the frame and axle bearings to permit up-and-down movement, and sliders to prevent lateral movement. A more modern design uses solid rubber springs, brake equipment, Two main types are used, brake shoes that are pressed against the tread of the wheel, and disc brakes and pads. More modern, bolsterless bogie designs omit these features, instead taking advantage of the movement of the suspension to permit rotational movement. The Commonwealth bogie, manufactured by the English Steel Corporation under licence from the Commonwealth Steel Company in Illinois, fitted with SKF or Timken bearings, it was introduced in the late 1950s for all BR Mark 1 vehicles. It was a heavy, cast-steel design weighing about 6.5 long tons, with sealed roller bearings on the axle ends, the leaf springs were replaced by coil springs running vertically rather than horizontally. The advanced design gave a better quality than the BR1. The side frame of the bogie was usually of bar construction, with simple horn guides attached, the axle boxes had a cast-steel equaliser beam or bar resting on them. The bar had two steel coil springs placed on it and the bogie frame rested on the springs, the effect was to allow the bar to act as a compensating lever between the two axles and to use both springs to soften shocks from either axle
8.
Diesel fuel
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Diesel engines have found broad use as a result of higher thermodynamic efficiency and thus fuel efficiency. This is particularly noted where diesel engines are run at part-load, as their air supply is not throttled as in a petrol engine, to distinguish these types, petroleum-derived diesel is increasingly called petrodiesel. Ultra-low-sulfur diesel is a standard for defining diesel fuel with substantially lowered sulfur contents, as of 2016, almost all of the petroleum-based diesel fuel available in UK, Europe and North America is of a ULSD type. In the UK, diesel fuel for use is commonly abbreviated DERV, standing for diesel-engined road vehicle. In Australia diesel fuel is known as distillate, and in Indonesia, it is known as Solar. Diesel fuel originated from experiments conducted by German scientist and inventor Rudolf Diesel for his engine he invented in 1892. Diesel fuel is produced from various sources, the most common being petroleum, other sources include biomass, animal fat, biogas, natural gas, and coal liquefaction. Petroleum diesel, also called petrodiesel, or fossil diesel is the most common type of diesel fuel, synthetic diesel can be produced from any carbonaceous material, including biomass, biogas, natural gas, coal and many others. The raw material is gasified into synthesis gas, which after purification is converted by the Fischer–Tropsch process to a synthetic diesel, the process is typically referred to as biomass-to-liquid, gas-to-liquid or coal-to-liquid, depending on the raw material used. Paraffinic synthetic diesel generally has a content of sulfur and very low aromatics content, reducing unregulated emissions of toxic hydrocarbons, nitrous oxides. Fatty-acid methyl ester, more known as biodiesel, is obtained from vegetable oil or animal fats which have been transesterified with methanol. It can be produced from many types of oils, the most common being rapeseed oil in Europe, methanol can also be replaced with ethanol for the transesterification process, which results in the production of ethyl esters. FAME can be used pure in engines where the manufacturer approves such use, FAME as a fuel is specified in DIN EN14214 and ASTM D6751. Pure biodiesel has an energy content about 5–10% lower than petroleum diesel, the loss in power when using pure biodiesel is 5–7%. As FAME contains low levels of sulfur, the emissions of oxides and sulfates. Use of biodiesel also results in reductions of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, CO emissions using biodiesel are substantially reduced, on the order of 50% compared to most petrodiesel fuels. The exhaust emissions of particulate matter from biodiesel have been found to be 30% lower than overall particulate matter emissions from petrodiesel, the exhaust emissions of total hydrocarbons are up to 93% lower for biodiesel than diesel fuel. Biodiesel also may reduce risks associated with petroleum diesel
9.
Engine-generator
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An engine-generator or portable generator is the combination of an electrical generator and an engine mounted together to form a single piece of equipment. This combination is called an engine-generator set or a gen-set. In many contexts, the engine is taken for granted and the unit is simply called a generator. Engine-generators are available in a range of power ratings. Regardless of the size, generators may run on gasoline, diesel, natural gas, propane, bio-diesel, water, sewage gas or hydrogen. Most of the units are built to use gasoline as a fuel. Some engines may also operate on diesel and gas simultaneously, many engine-generators use a reciprocating engine, with fuels mentioned above. This can be an engine, such as most coal-powered fossil-fuel power plants use. Some engine-generators use a turbine as the engine, such as the gas turbines used in peaking power plants. The generator voltage, frequency and power ratings are selected to suit the load that will be connected, engine-driven generators fueled on natural gas fuel often form the heart of small-scale combined heat and power installations. There are only a few portable three-phase generator models available in the US, most of the portable units available are single-phase generators and most of the three-phase generators manufactured are large industrial type generators. In other countries where power is more common in households, portable generators are available from a few kW. Portable engine-generators may require an external power conditioner to safely operate some types of electronic equipment, small portable generators may use an inverter. Inverter models can run at slower RPMs to generate the power that is necessary, thus reducing the noise of the engine, inverter generators are best to power sensitive electronic devices such as computers and lights that use a ballast. The mid-size stationary engine-generator pictured here is a 100 kVA set which produces 415 V at around 110 A and it is powered by a 6. 7-liter turbocharged Perkins Phaser 1000 Series engine, and consumes approximately 27 liters of fuel an hour, on a 400-liter tank. Diesel engines in the UK can run on red diesel and rotate at 1,500 or 3,000 rpm and this produces power at 50 Hz, which is the frequency used in Europe. In areas where the frequency is 60 Hz, generators rotate at 1,800 rpm or another divisor of 3600, many generators produce enough kilowatts to power anything from a business to a full-sized hospital. These units are particularly useful in providing backup power solutions for companies which have serious economic costs associated with a shutdown caused by an power outage
10.
Railway brake
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Brakes are used on the cars of railway trains to enable deceleration, control acceleration or to keep them standing when parked. Clasp brakes are one type of historically used on trains. In the earliest days of railways, braking technology was primitive, some railways fitted a special deep-noted brake whistle to locomotives to indicate to the porters the necessity to apply the brakes. All the brakes at this stage of development were applied by operation of a screw and linkage to brake blocks applied to wheel treads, and it was also unreliable, as the application of brakes by guards depended upon them hearing and responding quickly to a whistle for brakes. This had become apparent from the trials on railway brakes carried out at Newark in the previous year, the chief types of solution were, The chain brake, such as the Heberlein brake, in which a chain was connected continuously along the train. As with car brakes, actuating pressure to apply brakes was transmitted hydraulically and these found some favor in the UK, but even in the UK problems were found with the water used as brake fluid freezing The Westinghouse air brake system. The Westinghouse system uses smaller air reservoirs and brake cylinders than the vacuum equipment. An ejector on the created a vacuum in a continuous pipe along the train. This system was very cheap and effective, but it had the weakness that it became inoperative if the train became divided or if the train pipe was ruptured. This system was similar to the vacuum system, except that the creation of vacuum in the train pipe exhausted vacuum reservoirs on every vehicle. If the driver applied the brake, his drivers brake valve admitted atmospheric air to the pipe. Being an automatic brake, this system applies braking effort if the train divided or if the train pipe is ruptured. Its disadvantage is that the vacuum reservoirs were required on every vehicle, and their bulk. Note, there are a number of variants and developments of all these systems, the Newark trials showed the braking performance of the Westinghouse air-brakes to be distinctly superior but for other reasons it was the vacuum system that was generally adopted on UK railways. Goods and mineral vehicles were provided with hand brakes by which the brakes could be applied by a lever operated by staff on the ground. Early goods vehicles had brake handles on one side only and random alignment of the vehicles gave the guard sufficient braking but, from about 1930 and these trains, not fitted with continuous brakes were described as unfitted trains and they survived in British practice until about 1985. By 1952 only 14% of open wagons, 55% of covered, in the early days of diesel locomotives, a purpose-built brake tender was attached to the locomotive to increase braking effort when hauling unfitted trains. The brake tender was low, so that the driver could see the line and signals ahead if the brake tender was propelled ahead of the locomotive
11.
Railway coupling
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A coupling is a mechanism for connecting rolling stock in a train. The design of the coupler is standard, and is almost as important as the gauge, since flexibility. The equipment that connects the couplings to the stock is known as the draft gear. The different types of coupling do not always have formal or official names and these couplings followed earlier tramway practice but were made more regular. The vehicles are coupled by hand using a hook and links with a turnbuckle that draws the vehicles together, in Britain, this is called a screw coupling. Vehicles have buffers, one at each corner on the ends and this arrangement limits the slack in trains and lessens shocks. The earliest buffers were fixed extensions of the frames. This coupling is still the standard in European countries, the link-and-pin coupling was the original style of coupling used on North American railways. After most railroads converted to semi-automatic Janney couplers, the link-and-pin survived on forestry railways, while simple in principle, the system suffered from a lack of standardisation regarding size and height of the links, and the size and height of the pockets. The link-and-pin coupler consisted of a body that received an oblong link. During coupling, a worker had to stand between the cars as they came together and guide the link into the coupler pocket. Once the cars were joined, the employee inserted a pin into a hole a few inches from the end of the tube to hold the link in place. This procedure was exceptionally dangerous and many brakemen lost fingers or entire hands when they did not get out of the way of the coupler pockets in time. Many more were killed as a result of being crushed between cars or dragged under cars that were coupled too quickly, brakemen were issued with heavy clubs that could be used to hold the link in position, but many brakemen would not use the club, and risked injury. The link-and-pin coupler proved unsatisfactory because, It made a connection between the cars, with too much slack action. There was no design, and train crews often spent hours trying to match pins. Crew members had to go between moving cars during coupling, and were injured and sometimes killed. The links and pins were often pilfered due to their value as scrap metal, john H. White suggests that the railroads considered this to be more important than the safety issue at the time
12.
Janney coupler
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The Janney Coupler is a semi-automatic railway coupler. The earliest commercially successful version of the coupler, it was patented by Eli H. Janney in 1873. The AAR/APTA Type E, Type F, and Type H tightlock couplers are all compatible knuckle couplers, prior to the formation of the AAR these were known as MCB Couplers. After 1910 the MCB reconstituted itself into the AAR, in 1913 the American Steel Foundries had developed the new Type D coupler that was accepted as the standard coupler for the United States, and no new equipment could be built using any other coupler. It was and is still the most used knuckle coupler in the world, the modern Alliance coupler still uses the modern AAR-10 and/or -10A contour, as well as others, but cannot be used in the US on an interchanging railway. Brand names of the now standard AAR Type E, F and Tightlock couplers are ASF, Buckeye, the Interlocking contour of knuckle couplers was the first aspect to be standardized. In about 1910 the producers were all using the then standardized MCB-10 contour, in the 1930s the AAR Type D was improved and became the Type E, the contour, however, stayed the same. A few years later the 10 contour was modified into an optional standard called the 10A contour. The most modern contour, for a plain Type E knuckle coupler, is still the AAR-10 and -10A, the same MCB-10 contour has been an approved standard for interchange service for over 100 years, with only the slightest dimensional changes. The Type H Tightlock couplers, which are used on passenger-carrying rolling stock, the purpose of couplers is to join rail cars or locomotives to each other so they all are securely linked together. Major Eli Janney, a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, Janney couplers are usually attached to draw gear, but sometimes, in the case of locomotives, the Type E is bolted directly on the headstock. The Janney coupler is used in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Chile, Brazil, China and elsewhere. Among its features, Maximum tonnage as high as 32,000 metric tons such as on the Fortescue Railway, minimum ultimate tensile strength, Grade E knuckles,650,000 pounds-force Grade C or Grade E knuckles are required for interchange service. Such as Victorian narrow gauge lines, Janney couplers are always right-handed, i. e. their shape resembles the human right hand with fingers curled, as viewed from above. Required coupler heights, in North AmericaEmpty cars,33.5 inches ± 1-inch Loaded cars,32.5 inches in ± 1-inch Janney couplers are uncoupled by lifting the pin with a lever at the corner of the car. This pin is locked when the coupler is under tension, so the usual uncoupling steps are to compress the coupling with a locomotive, lift and hold up the pin, side operated variants are called the Sharon or Buckeye coupler. Most Janney couplers are now bottom operated, trains fitted with Janney couplers can accommodate heavier loads than any other type of coupler. Thus, the heaviest coal trains in New Zealand use Janney couplings, also, long-distance freight trains in North America are commonly more than 1-mile long, whereas this is not seen in Europe, where most freight trains still use English buffers and chain couplers
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