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A question about couplers....
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Hello all, I had an interesting night last night as an NS freight train ahead of me on the Belt RR in Chicago went into emergency. The dispatcher gave us a signal that let us run down the track next to the train. We were only able to get by about five cars as we had a stop signal at Belt Junction, a very busy piece of RR. Anyway, I got off and walked from the rear of the train while the NS conductor walked from the head end. I walked up about 8 cars when I heard air blowing and saw about a 1 car gap. I figured it was a broken knuckle, but I checked both knuckles and they seemed fine. I called the NS crew and informed them of the situation. I then tied the NS train together and noticed one of the cars knuckle pins woud not drop. So I had the engineer stretch apart and I closed the "problem knuckle" and opened the other. I still could not get the pin to drop. We tried tying together again and the same thing. I noticed that the two knuckles seemed to be different. It was almost like the one knuckle was too wide for the other to completely grab onto it. By this time the NS conductor found me and I told him what was happening. He tried to same thing as myself and I explained to him my theory. He wasn't sure either. He finally just tied together with a little more force and the knuckles finally stayed together. The NS train pulled clear of the junction about 30 car lengths when it went into emergency again. By this time I was on my train and we were headed by it again and I verified that the same two cars came apart. <br /> Does anyone know why the knuckles weren't staying together?? I never saw the one pin drop, but when the conductor stretched his tie the knuckles stayed together. I assuming once the NS train started to pick up a little speed the slightest bit of slack was able to force the knuckles to seperate. Does anyone know what the cause of this was???
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