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[quote user="chutton01"] [quote user="Bucyrus"]Unlike 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.[/quote] Sounds like "deadblocks", as you described them, evolved into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Buffers_and_chain">Buffers </a>on various non North American railroad systems. <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] 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.
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