replacement of a knuckle

[MP173]

Ok, I am listening to my scanner, watching the world series, playing my guitar, and going outside for the lunar eclipse, when CN752 reports a broken knuckle here on Mount Valpo. BTW...this is the second CN752 today to stall or be immobilized on Indiana's toughest grade!

What is involved with a broken knuckle? More specifically, how do you change one? Where do you keep the spares? Under the railcar?

The 752 has been a real curse today with both of them breaking down on the hill.

When is the UP or the CN going to adequately power these 17,500 ton trains?

ed

[Anonymous]

Well, I wish each car had a knuckle, but they are mounted only on the locomotives just above the "plow." There are two types of knuckles, one is an E-type and the other is F-type. E's are more common. Well, each knuckle weighs about 80lbs. When a knuckle breaks you have to pull up on the cut lever that pull up the pin, but you have to hold the cut lever up or the guts of the knuckle fall out. So, you either need two people or you better find something to tie the cut lever up with. Then you lift up the replacement knuckle and put it in and hold in place while dropping the pin back down. Luckily, KNOCK ON WOOD, I have not had to change one outside a training environment, but I feel my day will come. I'm wondering how knuckles are changed on the line of road, do you carry the thing back 100 cars??? Maybe some of the other folks have some good knuckle changing stories as well as more specific info about the knuckle changing process, but that's my [2c].

[Anonymous]

An interesting tidbit for those out there that didn't already know it....

If the knuckle is closed, you don't have to have a pin to hold it in there, the only time you really need a pin is when you open the knuckle up.

I never knew that until I opened a knuckle one time and it came tumbling out, whoever replaced it just didn't bother putting another pin in.

[edblysard]

Well,
You cheat.
When you break in two...and you have a pretty good idea where the break is, you, (the brakeman or conductor) get to walk back to the break, to close the angle ****, so the engineer can pump up the air.
When you get there, and figure out which knuckle you need, you radio the engineer, and he drops the right one off of the locomotive.
He then drags you up to where he dropped the knuckle, you put it on the platform or walkway, and shove back to the break.
If your lucky, and have a brakeman and a conductor, it isnt that hard to change.
If you unlucky, its just you, or the knuckle pin is sheared.
Not that big a deal, if you can get the knuckle back in the coupler, and get the pin to drop, the knuckle will stay locked, minus the pin.

Ed

[ValleyX]

Eddie, you're right, the best thing to do is to pull down and get a knuckle where the hogger that got it threw it off. Course, it doesn't necessarily have to be the hogger's fault that the knuckle broke, there's sometimes extenuating circumstances.

If there's a reason that you can't pull down and pick one up, get a broom or at least a flagstick to make it easier to carry it over your shoulder. Or, if by chance you've got help, the helper can hold one end of the broomstick or flagstick.

Interesting how that knuckle stays in without a pin, isn't it. But I've always thought that without a pin, the stress factors of normal slack action would have to take that knuckle out sooner or later, a personal theory.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE:
Interesting how that knuckle stays in without a pin, isn't it. But I've always thought that without a pin, the stress factors of normal slack action would have to take that knuckle out sooner or later, a personal theory.

Hmmm, that's an interesting thought......

I wonder if it would make much of a difference...

[MP173]

Well, the knuckle broke at 630 last night and at 1030, they were still figuring out how to change it.

It was located on single track section in Valparaiso (single track runs about 6 miles) , on a grade that stalls coal trains anyway. It effectively shut the railroad down.

Train 448 was behind and came up to assist. The 2 conductors attempted to change knuckles, but didnt have the right one. The coal cars required F70's, they only had F50's and E's.

Now what do they do you ask?

The head end pulled the train up to double track . The 448's power pushed the remaining 40 cars up, with conductor protection. BTW, the power was two Wisconsin Central units.

AFter that, I went to bed. One of the westbounds stuck had a F70 knuckle and it was going to be a team effort to change it I believe.

The full moon was certainly out tonight, casting an eerie glow.

I scored some points with my 10 year old as we went out to watch the coal train pull/pushed up the hill. His comments "we ought to do this more often."

When they got it done...I dont know, I was in dreamland.

How long does it normally take to change a knuckle, under good circumstances?

This has to be one of those things they turns a dispatcher over. Could hear it in his voice.

Hope everyone got home safely.

ed

[zardoz]

QUOTE: Originally posted by macguy

An interesting tidbit for those out there that didn't already know it....

If the knuckle is closed, you don't have to have a pin to hold it in there, the only time you really need a pin is when you open the knuckle up.

I never knew that until I opened a knuckle one time and it came tumbling out, whoever replaced it just didn't bother putting another pin in.

Pins falling out of knuckles happens quite frequently on coal cars that are dumped in a rotary dumper that turns the car almost completely upside down. The coal plant at Waukegan was famous for that. They would shove the cars one at a time up to the dumping hill, turn it over to dump the coal, then let it roll down the hill to the yard. And to make matters worse, their yard was ten curved tracks, so there were very many bypassed drawbars, as well as frozen knuckles.

When picking up the empties, almost every car has to be manually coupled together, and many of them had no pins in the knuckle. At least 10% of the cars had no knuckle pins. We were constantly replacing knuckle parts. One got to be quite the expert at knuckle replacement. Just getting the empties together for a complete train was a twelve-hour job (unless one cheated).

The way we could 'cheat' was, of course, completely against the rules. The yard was nearly level; but when I say 'nearly', I mean there was just enough grade that if one was strong enough, you could go between the cars and manually shove one a bit, just far enough to line up the drawbars and open the knuckle. So when the engines would come onto a particular track, they could slowly shove until the entire track was coupled. Putting together a 100+ car train was quite the workout.

[jchnhtfd]

Great discussion on how to change those puppies... being an engineer (of the slide rule/drafting board sort) rather than an engineer (of the throttle sort) I never had the pleasure...
Couple of questions in ed's post which didn't get hit, though, I think -- the big one being why do these things break or pull out? No one single reason, but the most common (at least from the victims I've seen) is metal fatigue: I think we've all taken a piece of sheet metal at one time or another and bent it back and forth until it breaks. That's fatigue. It's hard to think of a knuckle suffering fatigue, but they do, and any incipient crack (it doesn't take much) will grow under slack action or just changes in pull and will, eventually, break -- unless someone sees the crack first, which is unlikely. Rails and wheels do it too, and a great deal of effort is expended in finding these problems before something bad happens!
It's not really a matter of power, although how the power is distributed in the train (if it is) does make a difference, as greater pull through the knuckle will make the fatigue and failure happen faster.

[mvlandsw]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz

Originally posted by macguy

An interesting tidbit for those out there that didn't already know it....

If the knuckle is closed, you don't have to have a pin to hold it in there, the only time you really need a pin is when you open the knuckle up.

I never knew that until I opened a knuckle one time and it came tumbling out, whoever replaced it just didn't bother putting another pin in.

"Pins falling out of knuckles happens quite frequently on coal cars that are dumped in a rotary dumper that turns the car almost completely upside down. The coal plant at Waukegan was famous for that. They would shove the cars one at a time up to the dumping hill, turn it over to dump the coal, then let it roll down the hill to the yard. And to make matters worse, their yard was ten curved tracks, so there were very many bypassed drawbars, as well as frozen knuckles".

The knuckle pins on open top cars that may be turned over are supposed to have cotter pins installed to prevent this from happening. Many people have been injured by having knuckles fall on their feet.

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