Re: New Zealand Couplers: Old and New

trainrider47 Wrote:
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> Hi Chris,
>
> What is the New Zealand term for what we would
> call a brakeman who would be the person coupling
> up? A little over a week ago on the Weka Pass
> Railway I watched a student brakewoman being
> trained to make a coupling. It definitely took
> longer than coupling up with a knuckle coupler and
> also seemed to involve more time spent between the
> loco and carriage. This strikes me as being a bit
> of a safety issue.[[/color]/i] In the US coupling up the air
> shouid be the only time spent between cars or a
> loco and cars. That said, your old couplers are
> certainly superior to link and pin couplings!
>
> Michael Allen

Back in the 1980's, a lot of the South Australian Railways broad gauge (5'3") diesels and open wagons were converted to 3'6" gauge and shipped to Tasmania for log traffic work, at the time the Tasmanian network was all screw link couplings and buffers (like the poms had), my cousin (also my boss) visited Tasmania while our ex broad gauge rolling stock was in use, visited the railway yards as railway men do, asked the Taswegans what they thought of these great automatic couplers compared to screw link, conversation was something like this:-
Cousin - What do you think of these knuckle couplers compared to your old fashioned screw link?
Taswegan - Hate them mate, too bloody dangerous!
Cousin - Yeah, those screw links and buffers look pretty bad!
Taswegan - Nah mate, those knuckle couplers are dangerous, somebody is going to get killed using them!!

Cousin was gob smacked but true story!

Wayne from Oz