I recently saw a photograph of a 5-unit spine car and on the end it said "Do Not Hump". Can anyone explain to me what that means?
Easy Enough, that means don't run the car thru a hump yard, where frieght cars are pushed up a small hill, and then roll into various sorting yard tracks dependant on remote-control switches.There's a lot more to it, but actually I'm wondering if hump switching is really any worse than normal flat switching (I guess the final coupling bump is a bit rougher in hump switching).
One of the Chicago area belt railways advertised a few years back that they had the best flat classification yards in the Chicago area. IIRC, they were after auto-rack traffic.
Looking at spine cars and auto-racks, it strikes me that there really isn't a lot to those cars, and that while they might withstand road use, but not do so well being humped. What's more with some loads, I think the customers might not appreciate their merchandise being banged up more than is absolutely necessary.
Dan
Hmm, I thought it had something to do with teens hanging around the freight yard.
Springfield PA
A video of a humpyard in operation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrPuqWrn1-g