Janney with his coupler
2008-08-22

 A coupler is a mechanism for connecting railroad cars in a train. On many railroads, including those of North America, cars are connected by couplers consisting of knuckles--clamps that lock with their mates--joined to the ends of drawbars, which are fastened to housing mechanisms on the cars. Cars automatically couple when they come together and one car's open knuckle engages the other car's closed knuckle. The drawbar pivots in its housing, allowing the knuckled end some lateral play to prevent moving cars from derailing on a curved track. The operation of the knuckle coupler is similar to the joining of human hands by hooking fingers. The Janney coupler was invented by Eli Janney, who received a U.S. patent in 1873 (number 138,405). It is also known as a "buckeye coupler". Janney was a dry goods clerk and former Confederate Army officer from Alexandria, Virginia , who used his lunch hours to whittle from wood an alternative to the link and pin coupler, the standard coupler used to hook together US freight cars for most of the nineteenth century. The link and pin coupler consisted of a tubelike body that received an oblong link. During coupling, a railworker had to stand between the cars as they came together and guide the link into the coupler pocket. Once the cars were joined, the employee inserted a pin into a hole a few inches from the end of the tube to hold the link in place. The link and pin coupler ultimately proved unsatisfactory because: • it made a loose connection between the cars with too much give and play • there was no standard design and train crews often spent hours trying to match pins and links while coupling cars • links and pins were frequently lost, resulting in substantial replacement costs • crew members had to go between moving cars during coupling and were frequently injured and sometimes killed. In 1873, Eli H. Janney patented a knuckle style coupler that was to become the standard for the freightcar couplers used even today. The coupler had a bifurcated drawhead and a revolving hook, which, when brought in contact with another coupler, would automatically interlock with its mate. The Janney coupler had several advantages over link and pin couplers. Not only did it alleviate the problem of loose parts that plagued the link and pin coupler,  it also allowed railworkers to couple and uncouple cars without having to go between the cars to guide the link and set the pin. One commentator described the automatic coupling operation as follows: While the cars were apart, the brakeman had to make sure the knuckle of the coupler on the waiting car stood in an open position and that the pin had been lifted into its set position. When the opposite coupler was closed and locked in position, the brakeman was able to stand safely out of the way and signal the engineer to move the cars together. When the knuckle of the coupler of the moving car hit the lever arm of the revolving knuckle on the open coupler, it revolved around the locked one, while concurrently the locking pin dropped automatically from its set position into the coupler, locking the knuckle in place. Although the brakeman had to set up the entire situation by hand, the actual locking operation was automatic and did not require the brakeman to stand between the cars." Though the market was flooded with literally thousands of patented couplers,  Janney's design was clearly among the best and slowly achieved recognition in the industry. In 1888, the Master Car Builders Association Executive Committee obtained a limited waiver of patent rights--placing much of Janney's design in the public domain--and adopted the design as its standard. In 1875, there were more than 900 car coupler patents. By 1887, the number of coupler patents had topped 4,000, and by 1900 approximately 8,000 coupler patents had been issued.