Observation & Question

[Mookie]

Observation - one sack of tortilla snacks - $2.49, one diet pop - $.60 - reaction to one lone woman watching trains - priceless. I wish I could have taken pictures of the faces of the drivers going past on a busy street. They were as good as any of the locomotive pictures I have seen! Train crews smiled and waved! They knew!

Question - just before the grade xing, (I shudder to even mention that phrase) there is a dip in the tracks. A loaded coal train was slowly leaving town and I could hear the noise of the couplers - the end coupler on the first gondola would raise up and then when it got just beyond the grade crossing (shudder) it would snap back into place - I watched it happen several times. Is this normal? I have never heard or seen this before. Was it because there was too much slack in the train yet?

Thanx

Jen

[Anonymous]

No, Mook, it's not normal. Rail joints take alot of abuse. If the ground is soft, the hammer-blows of the wheels on the joint tend to make the joint lower and lower. Some up-and-down motion is to be expected, but not what you describe. Sometimes you find a high-low coupling...that gets pretty involved to couple up to. And what's the point of a "diet pop", when you're sucking down a bag of tortilla snacks?

[JoeKoh]

According to some dieters the chips and diet pop cancel each other out calorie wise.Rail joints do take a lot of strain.I saw a larger gap in one and reported it to the track dept.It was fixed pronto.
stay safe
Joe

[Modelcar]

....Sounds like that "dip" is excessive. Coupler rides up on one next to it because the wheels are of different elevation and then all come back in line together when they get through the "dip" and the couplers snap back in line together. I am not a railroad person but that offset sounds like it needs attention to move couplers up and down that much.

QM

[wabash1]

contrary to the belief in the others statement its not a problem jenny. see you said before a crossing which the crossing dont sink as much as the road bed does but in leaving the yard the slack was not tight and this coupled with the fact that one part is low and the other is high the one care raises while the other is low. when the first car raises it pops the knuckle theen when the other car raises back up to the 1st car level it will pop again. and so on til the train passes. most people dont notice this but almost all crossings are like this the reason you dont hear it is becouse of speed and slack action. it dont matter if you are doing 10mph or 60 mph the dip id not that dramatic. the dips that are bad eengineers will tell the track men as the plow will drag and tear up a crossing.

[Jackflash]

J's right, I remember a long time ago when I was
braking we had a crossing that had been elevated
prior to the track on both sides of the crossing
being raised, for about a month trains would
come in two (not all trains but some) when you
would go back you would find the knuckles on
both cars closed and locked but the train would
be in two, this lasted about a month, until MOW
raised the roadbed on each side of the crossing
jackflash

[CShaveRR]

Take it easy, Jen!

Besides all of the reassurances people have given you about the crossing, the train (if it is your typical coal train with rotary-dump cars) had either shelf couplers or the F-type tight-locking couplers. Nothing short of a major derailment would tear those cars apart.

Anticipating your question, a shelf coupler has an added part to the casting below the knuckle... two of those together would eliminate excessive vertical movement. There are double-shelf couplers, with added material above the knuckle.
The Type F couplers are large castings, with interlocking parts above, below, and to both sides of the normal coupler. There is virtually no vertical movement with a pair of those.

[BRAKIE]

Jenny,J is correct..I will add that coupler banging is as old as railroading..

Now just for fun the next time you watch a train by look at the rail...See how it moves up and down? That to is as natural as the coupler banging...No worries.

Now just for fun..Did you know a Great Lake freighter will twist during high seas and rivets will pop out of the hull?? Oh not to worry it was built to do just that..If it didn't twist it would break up and founder in high seas..

Yes Jenny all of the great lakes will produce high seas,the worst being Lake Erie as it is the shallowest of the great lakes..

[Jackflash]

Carl in my post above concerning trains comming in two at a certain crossing the cars were always cement cars, the couplers were type E they were not
hood and shelf couplers, heck this may have been
before hood and shelf couplers, be safe, jackflash

[CShaveRR]

On a good stretch of railroad, one can use the coupler banging to figure out when the end of a passing train is near. The slack toward the end of the train tends to travel in and out, even when it's pretty well stretched behind the power.
It doesn't take much of a change in coupler height to produce the effect.
(Of course, if the slack is bunched, it's generally bunched throughout the train.)

[Mookie]

it was lunch & in a girl's mind - that is a good trade off!

:)

[Mookie]

that was my thinking - pop and chips-wise.

I know the rail bed isn't too firm just before the xing - you can see the ties bend. But they work around that area all the time, so you would think they would have spotted that.

Jen

[Mookie]

funny thing was - I have never heard or seen it before. My eyes aren't the best, but have excellent hearing. Did see the coupler move back into position right in front of me however. I am still mystified...

Jen

[Mookie]

Wabash - Ah, I see. OK - I was concerned, cuz I had never seen it before, but this sounds like what I saw. They were just leaving town - not going very fast - since they only quit ringing the bell just a few feet from where I sit. (Or start as they are coming in that same way.

Jen

[Mookie]

Wow - a little time consuming to say the least!

Jen

[Mookie]

Carl - I was a loaded coal train, but don't remember looking to see if it had rotary dumps or not. Some of them on that particular section must dump at a place where they unload from the bottom - and I didn't think to remember which kind this was. I understand about the knuckle and this is probably why I have never heard it. But I will put this in my notes and remember to watch those in the future.

Thanx

Jen

[Mookie]

Larry - my husband sees the dip of the rail everytime a train comes and goes on the south tracks. I have a little trouble seeing it from my side of the chariot, since I am always on the passenger side. And there always seems to be a telephone pole right in my line of vision. That is what made this so unusual - I had never seen the couplers move or make noise on those tracks before.

That is interesting about the freighter. I didn't realize that and bet there are a lot of people out there that didn't either. Kind of like building sway into a skyscraper I guess. Don't like water and don't like flying - I am a ground person. Flew across one great lake to go to Chicago - had my eyes shut the whole time! Just hated it!

Jen