Hi Milne; Saw some those derailed tank cars come in to town on Friday afternoon, they are already turning a rusty orange where the sides were scraped. Great shots, you do get around. Cheers, Lenny
From the physics perspective...just how do tank cars remain totally coupled, and yet spread their wheels and trucks all over hellangone....huh? Which law of physics did "they" repeal when my back was turned?
Shelf Couplers are on all Tank cars. It is a safety coupler designed to prevent unwanted uncoupling. The design is excellent at doing this........the drawback, they don't let go in a derailment, and a dominio effect happens with tank cars. If there had been a boxcar or other type of car coupled to the tanks, it would have seperated, but this whole train looks to be tanks. As soon as the first tank went over, the fate of the rest of the train was sealed. Since the wheels and trucks are not 'permanently' attached to the car bodies, they stay on the tracks and go where ever gravity takes them.
Right on Lenny. It was CN train #786, all empty tanks from Brockville to Quebec City Ultramar. 51 tanks ended up on the ground.
I have seen a few shelf couplers with locomotives installed to them. I assume this is a safety thing in case a chemical car is coupled next to the locomotive to not actually hit it and cause harm to the crew?
CN loves the Ultratrain... it crashes at least once or twice a year... before long they'll just build a pipeline and the train will be gone.
Spectacular. Wouldn't be good to be railfanning next to the track that day! Any idea on what caused this?
What a mess! This type of incident cannot be a quick and easy cleanup? How many tracks were there before the derailment? Looks like perhaps three wide? Boxcab E50
Here's a picture of a 'standard' coupler on both cars. There is nothing at the top or the bottom to prevent separation.
Looking at this side, you can see the 'shelf' at the bottom. The coupler at the left can only drop to the shelfs level and no farther. However, seperation could be possible from the top.
Here's a look at a Shelf coupler with both the higher and lower 'shelfs' as used on tankcars today, coupled to a lower shelf coupler.
And last, two tankcars with upper and lower shelfs. Almost impossible to come undone without using the uncoupling lever.
Oh OK....now I see what you mean by "shelf". I was visualizing a flat piece of steel plate sticking out from the top of the coupler pocket and totally covering the coupler, thus preventing the opposing coupler from rising up and out of the protected coupler. Of course, my visualization does nothing to protect the opposing coupler from dropping down and out of the protected coupler. I guess that's why "they" didn't ask me to design a fail-safe coupler..... Thanks again Jerry... BTW, judging from the crash site photo, it appears that shelf couplers work very well from the breaking free stand point. But as you, or someone pointed out, you ground one car and you have lost most, if not all of the string.
