Canadian Railroads > More Export Diesels from London

Early on the morning of March 10, 2007 CN train 436 was arriving in Rockingham with a special delivery of Class diesels for UK and European customers.  The Freightliners behind Dash 8-40CM 2451 were riding on their own trucks (in contrast to the Brazilian SD70Ms, in the previous post), but had been fitted temporarily with North American knuckle couplers instead of the UK hook and buffers.  But behind the Freightliners was a smaller group of Class 66s for the Netherlands, in this case with the European couplers in place.  In order to haul the latter group to Halifax, a pair of transition flatcars was used at the ends of those locomotives.  The transition cars would travel back to London later, at the end of a regular train.  I guess they didn't trust the hook and buffers to handle the tonnage of a whole train.  

GTD

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The capacity of the hook is much lower then knuckle couplers.

Definitely an especially nice catch and photo series.
ALLEN
 

How come the UK seldom if ever puts kunuckle couplers on their locos, whereas the passenger cars among themselves do ? 

Traditionally the freight cars kept traditional hook and chain couplings longer than passenger stock (buckeyes certainly existed from the 1920s on the Southern and LNER passenger stock) and as the passenger stock "buckeye" couplers could be dropped to reveal a hook coupling it probably didn't make financial sense to bother until far more freight stock was equipped.

Posted from Android

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> How come the UK seldom if ever puts knuckle
> couplers on their locos, whereas the passenger
> cars among themselves do ? 

Probably because to an extent they are tied to the European Railways. Traffic through the Channel Tunnel never reached the goals
that were set. Before that BR freight was always making due with the leftover money from passenger operations. When the freight
opperations were privatized, EW&S (Ed Burkhardt) did buy a fleet of new coal hoppers equipped with Buckeye couplers, so many of
their Class 66 locomotives were equipped with a hinged Buckeye coupler that could swing out of the way when it was necessary to
use the screw and buffer coupling system. 

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> joemvcnj Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > How come the UK seldom if ever puts knuckle
> > couplers on their locos, whereas the passenger
> > cars among themselves do ? 
>
> Probably because to an extent they are tied to the
> European Railways. Traffic through the Channel
> Tunnel never reached the goals
> that were set. Before that BR freight was always
> making due with the leftover money from passenger
> operations. When the freight
> opperations were privatized, EW&S (Ed Burkhardt)
> did buy a fleet of new coal hoppers equipped with
> Buckeye couplers, so many of
> their Class 66 locomotives were equipped with a
> hinged Buckeye coupler that could swing out of the
> way when it was necessary to
> use the screw and buffer coupling system. 

And I bet that those Class 66 locomotives could haul a much heavier train when they using the Buckeye couplers then what they could with the screw and buffer.

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> How come the UK seldom if ever puts kunuckle
> couplers on their locos, whereas the passenger
> cars among themselves do ? 

Quite a few have knuckle couplers. But in combination with the hook/eye and buffer system.

The heaviest trains in the UK use the hook/buffer system.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/21 13:56 by exhaustED.

Is a British buckeye coupler compatible with a North American AAR coupler ?

Posted from Android

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> Is a British buckeye coupler compatible with a
> North American AAR coupler ?
>
> Posted from Android

I honestly don't know, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say no, just because of the difference in loading gauge/physical unit size.

Which European railroads use the USA knuckle coupler system? Will all or some convert from the British hook and buffer system to regular couplers? Does passenger equipment have knuckles?

Ed Burns
Retired NP, BN, BNSF from Minneapolis.

NPEDDIE Wrote:
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> Which European railroads use the USA knuckle
> coupler system? Will all or some convert from the
> British hook and buffer system to regular
> couplers? Does passenger equipment have knuckles?

The British Buckeye coupler is similar to the US knuckle coupler, in no other European country is a coupler like the US Janney design used. In the former Soviet Bloc the SA-3 coupler is vaguely similar to the US coupler but does not use a hinged knuckle. Most likely over a period of time the German speaking countries will drag the rest of the European 
railway companies into the full autocoupler system where the only manual operation is to uncouple by moving a lever. The air brake system and any telematics system (like Electronic Brake Control) will automaticly couple without human intervention. Look up the Voith Rail coupler on YouTube.