Hey all, I thought it would be fun to share some pics of railroadiana of yesteryear, sort of like a history lesson. Below is a picture of an early coupler, the old "pin and link" to be exact. These were extremely dangerous as the brakeman would have to stand between the cars to line up the link and then insert the pin into the coupler. needless to say , many hands and lives were lost using this method but it was a big improvement over just the old chain connectors that predated the pin and link. Let's see some more antiques and their history now that this is rolling down the track. Russ Hoffman Valley RR (N-scale)
This thread is a good idea, Russ. It might help to bring together the pictures of old equipment, some of which are scattered among other threads. Fitz - I have a little problem with your picture. It is too dark, on my monitor, to see much detail. It could be my monitor's fault, but I have found a tendancy for pictures posted on the web to come out darker than expected. I now make the version of my pictures used for posting somewhat lighter than normal. [ 19 November 2001: Message edited by: Peirce ]</p>
Fitz - Cool pic! Two of my favorite things, steam and semaphore! I know that you have lots of them so let's see more. Peirce- I am seeing the pic ok. I did, however, lighten my posted picture to see if there was a difference (See coupler pic above) and yes, if you lighten it before posting you can see a bit more detail. I notice too that when I upload pics their sharpness seems to degrade, even when I upload them using the highest resolution. I think the servers have a lot to do with it as they must compress the photo to take up less space. Here is another, some more vintage steam: Russ Hoffman Valley RR (N-scale)
If I remember correctly, the "Suggested" practice to make a couple with the link and pin, was to place the loop in the coupler of the stationary car and support it horizontally with the pin. As the moving coupler came within reach, you were to lean out, pull up the pin from the approaching coupler, then drop it in the loop as the two couplers came close enough to catch the loop, as that happened you removed the pin you were holding before the coupler faces came together, and dropped it in the original coupler, and stepped back. Sounds reasonably simple, right? That stepping back often caused the guy to trip over the rail and fall backwards loosing one or two legs. If he did not step back, sometimes the approaching car would run over him. If he had failed to get one of the pins far enough into the loop; as the slack stretched out it could cause the pin to pop up out of the coupler, where the tethering chain would cause it to swing around and break his arm, or clout him in the head. In practice, you could tell a new hire by how many fingers he had. The older ones had one or more fingers missing, because trying to hold up the weight of that loop up with the pin was too much for one hand, and quite often the loop would fall out. When that happened, the new guy instinctively grabbed for it! Sometimes he stuck his head between the coupler faces. The next guy, most of the time, would jerk back in time to only lose a hand or some fingers. It seemed easier to hold the loop with one hand, leaving your pin in place, and reach for the approaching pin, get it up far enough out of the coupler to clear the loop's thickness, and align the loop into the approaching coupler, slip your hand out, and drop the pin almost all at the same time. Whew! It depended upon how fast the coupler was coming at him. It was such a scary thing to do, a lot of guys simply dropped the pin and quit, hense, the term "I dropped the pin" came to mean I quit! The impact coupler design solved that problem!
As usual, Watash has provided us with the complete, detailed history of things. Thanks Watash! We sure are lucky to have people like you with real world experience. I love it! Let's post some more photos and get the history on them. Perhaps we can make this a learning experience for all. Russ Hoffman Valley RR [ 20 November 2001: Message edited by: rush2ny ]</p>
