Ulrich But then again, the life expectancy for the average male was only 45 years
But then again, the life expectancy for the average male was only 45 years
That was at birth. In the back then days of turn of the 20th century, 15 percent of people didn't make it to their first birthday. Losing that big a chunk of your cohort pushes down the life expectancy rate. If you were born in 1900 and made it to adulthood (which only about 70 percent of people did), you could expect to celebrate your 65th birthday and have a good shot at living to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
I added http:// at the beginning of that coupler link (groan), then it worked!
[Yoda] Finnicky, this forum software is! [/Yoda]
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
SD70DudeUse the "url" in brackets trick that Ed (gmpullman) posted over here: http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/273549.aspx
http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/273549.aspx
The bracketed URL did not work on my attempt, guess it only works on this forum's software when preceeded by the http://
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Use the "url" in brackets trick that Ed (gmpullman) posted over here:
Test
http://obts.wikia.com/RailCar_Couplers#AARx_Couplers
Overmod For those that don't know, this is from the OpenBVE Train Simulator community. Link is hot; it just renders on the page as if it weren't...
For those that don't know, this is from the OpenBVE Train Simulator community. Link is hot; it just renders on the page as if it weren't...
Not hot on my browser. Trying this:
http://obts.wikia.com/wiki/RailCar_Couplers#AARx_Couplers
For what it may be worth: I tried making the link live with the convention. From a PC running Firefox on Windows 10 with latest upgrades, the link did not render in red, and using the convention with text, wouldn't render clickable at all. This is very strange, and indicates to me that either the origin board or Kalmbach may have some sort of optional flag against hotlinking in force for some content.
OBTS Much more history and technical info on Janney\AAR couplers at obts.wikia.com/RailCar_Couplers#AARx_Couplers
Much more history and technical info on Janney\AAR couplers at
obts.wikia.com/RailCar_Couplers#AARx_Couplers
Link doesn't want to heat up.
John WR The CNJ trackage is today New Jersey Transit's Raritan Valley Line. However, it does not pass the CNJ station at Elizabeth; rather it is routed to the NEC on the Aldene connection.
The CNJ trackage is today New Jersey Transit's Raritan Valley Line. However, it does not pass the CNJ station at Elizabeth; rather it is routed to the NEC on the Aldene connection.
Thanks John, I was wondering about that!
Wayne
Victrola1 Wisconsin Death Trip http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200081.Wisconsin_Death_Trip It has been years since I have picked up a copy of this book. A different time is a different place. Death was less a stranger and less denied.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200081.Wisconsin_Death_Trip
It has been years since I have picked up a copy of this book. A different time is a different place. Death was less a stranger and less denied.
We had this in our English AP/creative writing class my senior year. There's something creepy about it. Sure, they had all sorts of scholarly stuff at the beginning about the research and the general temperament of living in that place in those days. But it strikes me just the same as those 'scholarly' introductions from psych people that 'legitimize' reprints of, say, Victorian pornography or "The Adventures of Jonathan Corncob"..
One thing for sure: when you died on the railroad, people could usually tell!
If your town was an active railroad center in the 19th century, go to your local library. Go through the old newspaper files. Note the number of railroad related deaths.
Brakemen figure prominently, especially in the Winter. Young men falling from the roof a freight car to an early demise was not uncommon. "Crushed between the cars," you will find as well.
I've seen it written that switchmen in link-and-pin days were easy to spot due to the digits they were missing.
I recall seeing a video which included a steam engine change on a passenger train. There were people going "in between" before the train came to a stop.
One wrong step...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
AgentKid IshmaelOSHA would have a fit seeing men working on the track as the train was approaching. And they didn't seem in any hurry to get out of the way. That doesn't look right to me. I think the film maker took a bit of artistic license to add a little drama to his work. All those men standing that close together would be konking each other over the head with the back-swings of their hammers. And no self respecting section foreman is going to let a train over a newly laid rail unless he gives it a once over by himself. In each of the scenes where this occurs the men almost move back in lockstep. Bruce
IshmaelOSHA would have a fit seeing men working on the track as the train was approaching. And they didn't seem in any hurry to get out of the way.
That doesn't look right to me. I think the film maker took a bit of artistic license to add a little drama to his work.
All those men standing that close together would be konking each other over the head with the back-swings of their hammers. And no self respecting section foreman is going to let a train over a newly laid rail unless he gives it a once over by himself. In each of the scenes where this occurs the men almost move back in lockstep.
Bruce
I recall seeing one of those '100 years ago' snipets in Railway Age several years ago, with the industry congratulating itself that only 1500 or so employees had been killed in the prior year. Safety at the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th and today is a word that has two different realities.
AgentKidIshmaelOSHA would have a fit seeing men working on the track as the train was approaching. And they didn't seem in any hurry to get out of the way.That doesn't look right to me. I think the film maker took a bit of artistic license to add a little drama to his work. All those men standing that close together would be konking each other over the head with the back-swings of their hammers. And no self respecting section foreman is going to let a train over a newly laid rail unless he gives it a once over by himself. In each of the scenes where this occurs the men almost move back in lockstep. Bruce
There might have been some theatrics incorporated in the film, but from accounts I have read, I suspect that cutting it close like that was fairly standard practice in those days. One 1800s era account from the Lehigh Valley RR describes a working track gang aware of an approaching milk train coming upgrade on the track they were working on.
The noise and tumult of the hard working milk train obscured the approach of a “Lightning Express” train coming down the grade fast on an adjacent track. When the captain blew the whistle to get clear, about 20-30 men watching the milk train stepped backwards in lockstep to clear the milk train; and stepped right into the path of the express train. Many were killed and injured.
Wonderful film Balt! Thanks for posting! I especially liked the first few minutes showing the Pennsy's crossover of the Jersey Central at Elizabeth NJ. That Pennsy trackage still survives as Amtraks Northeast Corridor. Not sure about the CNJ trackage, though.
Thanks, Balt. I especially enjoyed the Horseshoe Curve.
John
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Great film. Thanks. OSHA would have a fit seeing men working on the track as the train was approaching. And they didn't seem in any hurry to get out of the way.
Interesting film indeed.
Norm
Turn of the Century railroading -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UQolfyxbOk
I have been following this thread for a while but I didn't get a chance until now to address two points.
About the repeated delays for implementing automatic couplers. In Canada, the final drop dead date for "link & pin" couplers wasn't until 1916, during WWI.
As to the theft issue, railroaders being adaptive sorts, began to utilize the links and pins for many other uses. A number years ago there were commercials for a type of tool hanging kit for people's garages made by Rubbermaid, I think. Every time I saw those ads I thought of our freight shed at Irricana. Because they were unheated, they only had partial interior walls. Six or eight inch boards with alternating opens spaces of the same width, nailed to the vertical studs. Someone had drilled numerous holes in these boards and every one was filled with a black enamel handled pin! All of the spare lanterns and other necessary RR equipment was hung on those pins. Also many of our personal items were hung there as well. I can still picture my baby stroller hung at the top of the wall out of the way of the more regularly used items.
There were also some links, hung on pins, that were to be used as spares, should they have been required. Dad said that if he had known he was going to be the last station agent to live there, he would have taken a lot of items not on the inventory lists, including those pins. There was also a primitive moveable kitchen sink, counter, and cupboard thing, that was used as a desk in my bedroom. The hole where the sink would have been had been covered over with a piece of Masonite. One of the most literal hair raising experiences I have ever had on the internet was when I saw the drawings for that thing on the Canadian Pacific Historical Association website.
Ulrich, how are you neighbours in Guelph, ON, taking to being told they have been relocated to Europe?
For the best description of the link n pin, brake club brakemen days that I know of see "Railroadman" by Chauncey Del French. Might find a used copy on Amazon.
Mac McCulloch
John WR Ulrich I've read that theft was a big problem, with underpaid workers and others stealing the pins in order to sell them for their metal value. Bite your tongue, Ulrich. I am personally appalled that you would suggest theft was any part of American railroads in the second half of the 19th century. Since you are European I guess I can forgive your misunderstanding of us. But no American would ever EVER believe there was any kind of foul play connected with the development of our railroads during those years. John
Ulrich I've read that theft was a big problem, with underpaid workers and others stealing the pins in order to sell them for their metal value.
Bite your tongue, Ulrich. I am personally appalled that you would suggest theft was any part of American railroads in the second half of the 19th century. Since you are European I guess I can forgive your misunderstanding of us. But no American would ever EVER believe there was any kind of foul play connected with the development of our railroads during those years.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
BucyrusFrom our modern perspective, most railfans do not relate at all to the pre-1900 period. They tend to dismiss it as the beginning times. But it was a wild and exciting time in those teenage years of railroading in the 1880-1900 period.
Bucyrus
Bucyrus,
Many railroad managers of the post Civil War period also seem unable to relate to the railroads of their own day. Witness the general reluctance to adopt the Janney coupler and Westinghouse air brakes.
chutton01 BucyrusUnlike Janney couplers, link and pin couplers were not as capable of transmitting a shoving load. So the solution was to equip cars with “deadblocks” on each side of the link and pin coupler. To the best of my knowledge, however, deadblocks were not universal during the link and pin era. When shoving, the deadblocks came together and transmitted the compression force, leaving the link and pin coupler somewhat slack. Link and pin couplers were well known to amputate fingers or hands. Deadblocks smashed torsos. Sounds like "deadblocks", as you described them, evolved into Buffers on various non North American railroad systems.
BucyrusUnlike Janney couplers, link and pin couplers were not as capable of transmitting a shoving load. So the solution was to equip cars with “deadblocks” on each side of the link and pin coupler. To the best of my knowledge, however, deadblocks were not universal during the link and pin era. When shoving, the deadblocks came together and transmitted the compression force, leaving the link and pin coupler somewhat slack. Link and pin couplers were well known to amputate fingers or hands. Deadblocks smashed torsos.
When shoving, the deadblocks came together and transmitted the compression force, leaving the link and pin coupler somewhat slack. Link and pin couplers were well known to amputate fingers or hands. Deadblocks smashed torsos.
Sounds like "deadblocks", as you described them, evolved into Buffers on various non North American railroad systems.
Yes, deadblocks are very much like buffers. But buffer systems also include a means to stretch the couplers aganst the compression of the buffers. This achieves the important attibute of eliminating slack. Deadblocks reduced slack, but still left some. There was not a means to strtech the slack out by an adjustment feature with dead blocks.
Dead blocks were made as timber blocks mounted to the end sill on each side of the link and pin coupler. They acted like bumpers on a automobile, although they were interrupted in the center by the coupler. The main purpose of dead blocks was to be there when an engine wanted to shove cars. Then the dead blocks would all close up and transmit the shove without disrupting the cars as a string.
With link and pin couplers and deadblocks, if you push cars together, the deadblocks make contact, but coupler bodies do not. Although there could have been some variation on this principle depending on the sping action of the draft gear. I suspect that this is another point where some cars met the dead blocks before the couplers, and vice versa.
Without deadblocks, shoving with link and pin couplers meant that the coupler housings would close up with each other under compression the way today's couplers do. But the link and pin couplers had compression faces that were small, and often of mismatching configuration; and couplers were given some free play to swing during pulling. So when shoving, swing motion of the drawbars and uncertain contact surfaces could cause them to bypass each other and buckle the train with disasterous results.
The link would break in the process, but the process began with the bypass force.
If you should happen to have access to the book The American Railroad Passenger Car by John H. White Jr., there is an excellant photo of how the Janney coupler was modified for used with a link and pin coupler. This can be found in the chapter on Running Gears, page 569. This modification applied to freight as well as passenger cars.
Just a side note, my great-great (maybe a third ??) uncle was employed by the PRR and working in the Altoona Shops when the Janney coupler was taken to the PRR for tests. He was assigned to the project and family stories have him telling of the modifications that were made so it could be of practical use on rail cars. Multiple coupler types was one problem, and a project he worked on was to modify the coupler so it could be securely attached to a railcar. Their work assisted in further improvements to the original design.
Not to mention - after the train is built - the Brakemen riding the cars so they can apply and release the hand brakes on the cars at the Engineers whistle signal - and moving from car to car on the moving train to accomplish their duties.
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