Re: Cut levers or what ever they are called.

I realized this evening that my post didn't make sense as the cut levers on modern cars are uniformly on diagonal corners, so there is always a cut lever on the engineers side which ever it is either on the car ahead or on the car behind where the train is to be cut. Duh. As to the closed knuckles, I got a cab ride with a friend a couple years ago who was switching a mill as part of the days activities. The cars at the loading dock were moved by gravity, starting out with all the empties above the loading area. The mill employees would move each car individually into loading position, then release the hand brakes and let the car roll down toward the connection with the mainline. As I recall the crewman on the ground was quite frustrated as all of the cars ready and loaded were not coupled and had closed knuckles. Due to the miles to be covered, the extra time recoupling and lacing about 10 cars among other things made for something real close to a 12 hour day.