Automatic couplers had been the source of innumerable patents and extensive trial, but the difficulty was to have all railwa.ys adopt and in one 'universal type. Designs patented y Eli H. Janney in 1873 and 1874 were modi fied in 1879 to the general contours of the pres ent coupler heads. At ,first this was for pasT senger cars but later it was adapted-to freight cars. In 1884 the Master Car Builden' Asso ciation adopted the principle that the coupling faces should be in a vertical plane, or free to move vertically. In 1887 it adopted the Janney type as standard in order to arrive at some uniformity. The inventor broad-mindedly re linquished his claims to monopoly on the con tours of the coupler heads so that any manu facturers could make couplers of this standard type but with their own details as to drawbars, springs, etc. Much has been done to simplify and standardize the •designs in order to elimi nate the varying details.
In the Janney. or AKA coupler each dravP! bar has a.deep claw-shaped head,,to the claw of. which is pivoted an L-shaped knuckle. When two cars are pushed together the knuckles inter lock. To uncouple, a vertical linking pin is withdrawn from one coupler, the knuckle being able then to swing open and releage the other when the cars are pulled apart. The lock is at tached to a chain on a rod operated from the side of the car. Passenger cars now have this same coupling, but at one time there was exten sive use of an automatic coupler invented by Ezra Miller in 1867. The drawbar had a fish hook end, with inclined face; when two cars were pushed together these contact faces forced the drawbars sideways until the hooks inter locked. To uncouple, one drawbar was pulled sideways by a lever on the car platform.
Foreign railways make general use of coup ling chains attached to hook-end drawbars, the free end of the chain on one car being hooked over the drawbar of the other car. The chain may be drawn tight by a right and left hand screw until spring buffers on the ends of the cars are in contact, but on freight trains the chains are often left loose. Automatic coup lings hive been tried but have not come into use, except a combined hook coupling and cen tral. buffer applied to narrow-gauge cars. This differs from the American type in that the coupling faces are horizontal and narrow, the hook in one coupling riding up to engage a slot in the other.
Railroad Car Lighting and For lighting passenger cars, electricity and com pressed oil gas • have superseded oil lamps. other illuminants tried are coal gas, acetylene .,vs and air saturated with gasoline vapor.
Electric lighting is applied generally by• equip ping each car with a generator. driven from one of the axles by a belt, storage batteries being used to maintain the light when the train is, at rest or moving at. slow . speed. ,Another system is to supply the entire train from one generating plant placed in the baggage car and driven by a steam engine, though it may also be driven from a car axle. This system is more applicable for trains,made up of the same cars for Electric light for railway cars was intro duced first in 1881 by the London; Brighton and South Coast Railway, of England, using cars with storage batteries. The time (several hours) and inconvenience of charging the batteries led — in 1883—to the addition of a dynamo, driven from the car axle. The battery was first used in the United States in 1$82 by the Pennylmania inroad, which applied it extensively. This was followed by other railways, but the system was abandoned, few years owing to the time required for charging the batteries, the.cost of equipment for brilliant lighting and the cost of mainte nance due to the Short life of the batteries. As the batteries for. one car weighed about a too, to change them would have been about as mach trouble as to charge them.
Direct-dynamo lighting, with a generating plant to serve the entire, train was introduced in 1882 on the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway, and in 1889 on the Chicago, waukee and Saint Paul Railway. This was sup-. plemented later by batteries, either on each; car or on the car with the plant, in which latter case some auxiliary light -had to he supplied for use when the cars were separated.
Car heating on American, railways is ef fected almost universally by piping steam. from the locomotive to cells and radiators,, the cars . being •connected by flexible hose. Coal stoves caused so many disasters that their use has been prohibited. A snecial heater for sleeping and dining cars which may•have to be separated from trains Consists of a small and well pro-. tested stove with. boiler connected to the heater pipes. At large terminals the tracks on which passenger cars are stored, are .equipped with steam pipes with flexible connections for the car-heating systems. In Europe this system is used less extensively. In England the main reliance is upon portable 'loot warniere filled' with hot water or with acntate.of soda, which latter retains heat for a period of several hours.. For railroad car braking see Am Blume; for construction and repair machinery see Rsu.wmit SHOPS AND MACHlivarr.