Also can be train handling. There is a lot of slack with freight cars. A good passenger engineer will keep the slack action to a minimum. In the case of my bad knuckle, it was the inner workings that caused the issue. We put it back together and followed all protocol and it came apart again 10 minutes down the road. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
How did you get around this defect? Was it possible keep coupled? Or was an on-the-road repair needed? Or (I'd believe very low possibility) the car set out?
We set the two cars out in a siding in the middle of Nevada. Then they were picked up by different trains. One car (with the bad coupler) went to Oakland, the other went back to Chicago. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
Usually we would have to put everyone into the other cars. In this case it was the baggage car and the crew car. We blocked out what revenue rooms were left in the other sleepers and put the crew in there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
I feel sorry for the person waiting patiently at the crossing when he/she sees the train separate in front of them. OK, Now what?
Reminds me of the old combo: Murphy's law (Whatever can go wrong will) and Kevin's corollary (usually at the worst possible time)
2 similar incidents stick with me from when I was a kid. One morning while waiting for a school bus, a train passing by the neighborhood went into emergency. The last car of the head portion of the train stopped right behind us. A few seconds later, here comes the caboose coupling back on to the train! The caboose had somehow uncoupled and the quick-thinking crew bled the air off while it was still rolling and it caught up with the rest of the train. Next episode, I was watching a coal train roll by when it went into emergency just after the caboose went by. I took off to walk along with the crew to see what happened. About a 1/2 mile away, 2 cars came uncoupled and when the train stopped, each half was just clear of the next road crossing, just like the crossing was cut intentionally.
Rick, that first incident is what the old days of professional railroading was all about. Great story, thanks.
