Train Coupler Explained: Janney/CBC/AAR/Knuckle/Tightlock

if you are someone who likes to travel a lot in trains then chances are that you have taken a train that use jenny coupler that's how widespread they are and today we are going to look into this coupler so can you identify which one of these is a journey coupler yeah that's correct it's the one on the top left so let's look at a video of jenny coupler so what you'll note here is that the mechanical coupling happens automatically and then later we'll see how the other connections are done if they're automatic or they're manual so this coupler was first patented in 1873 by elliot jenny but up until that point most of the couplers were manual and what that means is you needed to have a trainmen standing between the two trains for coupling and as you can see it was really dangerous so much so that in 1892 there were close to 11 000 coupling related accidents in the us and after jenny couplers were starting to be used the number of accidents dropped down to 2000 and that was one of the main catalysts of why johnny coupler became immediately popular and today the coupler is used in all of these countries and this is not even the full list there are also other names of the coupler it's called aar apt ara mcb knuckle or in india it's called cbc which is central buffer coupling now in terms of classification it's a semi-automatic coupler which means that the mechanical coupling is done automatically but then the electrical and pneumatic connections have to be done manually and the decoupling is also done manually and for this classification it would fall under type one now there are also fully automatic versions of janie coupler but they're not that common and we'll look into that so this is the example of a semi-automatic coupling so after the mechanical coupling is established you'll see that the electrical and pneumatic coupling has to be done by hand like this and then you can see he will be connecting the brake pipes the main reservoir pipes by hand and after that the train is considered successfully coupled like that but then the automatic version of this coupling has this little head attached to the coupler which results in the electrical and the pneumatic connections and that's why this is a fully automatic version of johnny coupling just a quick comparison with shackle coupler shackle coupler had this head whereas for the pneumatic connections it had these two orifices one of the orifice was for main reservoir pipe and one orifice was for brake pipe one thing to note is that jenny couplers are always in a right-handed configuration so the coupler will typically have a movable knuckle like this and it rotates around this point here which is the point here and then there's a slot like this and there's a pin that drops into the slot so the way the coupling works is that when trains approach each other this knuckle is going to push the movable knuckle and when it pushes the movable knuckle then rotates rotates to the point where this movable knuckle moves past the slot and when it moves past the slot the pin drops into the slot resulting in full coupling so you can see the knuckle starts to rotate and it will it is going to rotate until the pin drops into the slot and you'll see the pin will suddenly drop into the slot right now and yeah here so the pin drops and the coupling is considered to be successfully done lb this is only mechanical coupling now this is a non-rigid type of coupler and what that means is that you have a lot of relative movement between the two coupler heads as you can see here because of this relative movement there's a lot of wear and tear but then also because you allow for some relative movement you can have a simpler mechanism at these points whereas for a rigid coupler these points need to account for some rotational movement then one of the reasons why this coupler is so famous is because it has the highest tonnage capacity but then at the same time it its gathering range is really poor look how it compares to the shackle coupler the vertical offset here is 140 whereas jenny only accommodates for a 30 millimeter vertical offset similarly horizontal is 370 but here is only 60. what that means is that the two coupler heads have to be properly aligned before the coupling can take place where shaku is relatively more flexible so these are different types of couplers there's type c and d which are the older types and the newer more modern types that are also more commonly seen today are type e f and h one of the main differences between all of these types are in the contour dimensions so if you were to look at the coupler and visualize a line around it that would be the contour shape and as there were advancements in the coupler types the dimensions changed a little bit which then added to the sidewall strength and which then added to the front wall strand not only that the new modern couplers also have other improvements so what we have been seeing all along is a type e coupler which is the most basic coupler and then what you noticed is that there was a lot of slack and a lot of movements now this is undesirable for freight that carries hazardous material inflammable material toxic waste and stuff like that so for that what they did was that they added an interlocking head so there's an interlocking head here an interlocking head here and what that does is that when the two trains couple this side of the coupler head falls into the interlocking head this side falls into this interlocking head and that is vertical stability to the coupler head this coupler is also called an interlock coupler and for passenger trains which require even tighter connections the interlocking heads here are much larger and that's why the connections are more tight making it suitable for an automatic coupling another thing to note is that all of these coupler types are compatible so you can couple a type e with type f this is what a type e looks like the basic changi coupler that we have been looking at type f has these interlocking heads that then prevent vertical movement but as you can see there is still some possibility of a slack here whereas tight lock couplers are even more tightly locked with a bigger interlocking head so there's less slack in this one last but not least let's talk about uncoupling so uncoupling is very simple what you need to do is that you have a rod that you then need to pull or you need to manipulate to lift this pin and when you lift the pin the pin has to be held until the trains can separate so that's how uncoupling is done and you can see the trainmen does not have to go between the couplers for uncoupling which was done in the manual coupling so it's much safer that ways also so thanks a lot i hope this has been informative and i look forward to seeing you in the next one

Channel: Rail Academy

Views: 64,545

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Id: u0W7OO5jJEY

Length: 7min 16sec (436 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021