# EUROPE | Automatic Centre Coupler (C-AK)



## JoKo65 (Feb 28, 2007)

This coupler will be the new coupler for European railways which use buffer and chain today. It is compatible to the Russian SA-3 coupler.
Here are some explanations and photos:

http://www.ba-bautzen.de/wirtschaftssenioren/amk/amkenglish/wabconeu_e.htm

It will be interesting if buffer and chain will be substituted for real or if nothing will happen.


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## Coccodrillo (Sep 30, 2005)

I think that we will continue to use buffers and chains forever.


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## Momo1435 (Oct 3, 2005)

^^ Probably, especially when you realize that this coupler is already 50 years in development and it's still not used. And with the liberalization of the European rail freight it will even be harder to introduce a new standard coupler.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

^^
Agreed - the way things are going, Europe will still be using 'buffer and chain' when that long dreamed of standard-gauge connection to China will have been completed and European railroads begin to be flooded with all of that Chinese equipment that uses those North American style AAR 'Type E' couplers.

:lol:

Mike


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## JoKo65 (Feb 28, 2007)

It will be interesting how China will "flood" European railways with an incompatible rolling stock.

If China wants to come to Europe it will have to accept European and Russian standards, otherwise they will have no chance.


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## Jay (Oct 7, 2004)

It's kinda surprising how well buffer and chain actually hold together considering that you're average European passenger car weighs about 100,000 lbs. That little thing looks like it could snap right off pretty easily.


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## sotavento (May 12, 2005)

mgk920 said:


> ^^
> Agreed - the way things are going, Europe will still be using 'buffer and chain' when that long dreamed of standard-gauge connection to China will have been completed and European railroads begin to be flooded with all of that Chinese equipment that uses those North American style AAR 'Type E' couplers.
> 
> :lol:
> ...


Sorry to stop your dreAMS ABOUT world domination but:

Atlas:









A 10 minutes changing operation and it becomes CHAIN:










(notice: they are actually 2 different locomotives there ... but it only takes 10 minutes to change from one tipe to the other)

Aditionally we also have "transition" wagons ... CHAIN coupling in one end ... ATLAS coupling in the other:










So I think that will manage to transport our 2500ton coal trains even when the chinese _"invade"_ our westerner corner of eurasia. :cheers:


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## sotavento (May 12, 2005)

Jay said:


> It's kinda surprising how well buffer and chain actually hold together considering that you're average European passenger car weighs about 100,000 lbs. That little thing looks like it could snap right off pretty easily.


There are some studies that concluded that actually the CHAIN coupling holds more than the ATLAS coupling (aka the american coupling) due to the diferent conception of both systems. :cheers:


Nonetheless _"automatic"_ or _"bar"_ coupling systems are prefered in long freight block-trains and in passenger EMU/DMU over the traditional chains. :cheers:


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

JoKo65 said:


> This coupler will be the new coupler for European railways which use buffer and chain today. It is compatible to the Russian SA-3 coupler.
> Here are some explanations and photos:
> 
> http://www.ba-bautzen.de/wirtschaftssenioren/amk/amkenglish/wabconeu_e.htm
> ...


Does it look exactly like SA-3 with automatic pneumatic connectors? :nuts:


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

European couplers are hideous, outdated and should be just phased out in 10 years.


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## Coccodrillo (Sep 30, 2005)

Once in a lifetime I agree with you (I thought I would have never said that), because they are weak and limit the weight of freight trains. They are not a problem for passenger trains, although having vehicles with different couplers is an operational problem (already partially existing in Europe with a dozen of different couplers for passenger trains).


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ The future of passenger transportation are EMUs, so that point is relatively moot for passenger trains.


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ The future of passenger transportation are EMUs, so that point is relatively moot for passenger trains.


Well, coupling EMUs from some 2 different branches and sending them as 1 train down to mainline may be good option, also railway must handle breakdowns somehow.


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> European couplers are hideous, outdated and should be just phased out in 10 years.


Well, the best thing EU can do - force to built all new freight cars with new automatic coupling, backward compatible with buffer/chain. Soviet Union managed to do it in 30th-50th, in a really harsh times, so I have no idea wy European Union can't do it. hno:


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## flierfy (Mar 4, 2008)

Coccodrillo said:


> Once in a lifetime I agree with you (I thought I would have never said that), because they are weak and limit the weight of freight trains. They are not a problem for passenger trains, although having vehicles with different couplers is an operational problem (already partially existing in Europe with a dozen of different couplers for passenger trains).


I don't know what you mean. There already is a common standard which is widely spread in Europe and works perfectly well. It's the Scharfenberg coupler.


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

flierfy said:


> I don't know what you mean. There already is a common standard which is widely spread in Europe and works perfectly well. It's the Scharfenberg coupler.


But it's no good for a freight trains.


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## Apoc89 (Mar 4, 2010)

I remember a while ago a thread similar to this one(which itself is quite old lol) came up and someone(or several people, forgot exactly) brought up a good point regarding why the EU hasn't adopted these kinds of couplers, and that's because gigantic US/Russia/China-style freight trains face much larger obstacles in Europe than just weak couplers.

The points I remember:
- Lack of infrastructure, such as sidings big enough to accomodate mile-long trains.
- Geographical reasons. In the EU you're rarely more than a few hundred kilometers from a major port, where it's more efficient to transport cargo through road or smaller faster trains, as is the case right now.
- Operational reasons: Railways in Europe's are currently optimized for running frequent, fast passenger trains. Unless it only runs on dedicated routes or late at night, a gigantic freight train would either cause a massive traffic jam or spend all day sitting in sidings waiting for all the passenger trains to go by.

And especially in today's poor economic times, where rail transport is a common target of government cuts, I don't see upgrading the EU rail network to accommodate heavy freight being a top priority.

All that said, automatic couplers still have the advantage of making it much faster and more efficient to couple/uncouple rolling stock, but I don't know if it's still worth the cost with that alone.


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## Coccodrillo (Sep 30, 2005)

flierfy said:


> I don't know what you mean. There already is a common standard which is widely spread in Europe and works perfectly well. It's the Scharfenberg coupler.


You have reason, the Schaku is the most common. But there are others, like the one used by Stadler on its trains in Switzerland, and many more for narrow gauge and tramway vehicles, which are not a problem (I actually was thinking of them).


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

I don't think buffers can chains have been used in the UK for 20years? Certainly none now.


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

poshbakerloo said:


> I don't think buffers can chains have been used in the UK for 20years? Certainly none now.


And what about freight? I'm aware about fact that UK rail freight is next to none, but still...


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## Coccodrillo (Sep 30, 2005)

Apoc89 said:


> I remember a while ago a thread similar to this one(which itself is quite old lol) came up and someone(or several people, forgot exactly) brought up a good point regarding why the EU hasn't adopted these kinds of couplers, and that's because gigantic US/Russia/China-style freight trains face much larger obstacles in Europe than just weak couplers.
> 
> The points I remember:
> - Lack of infrastructure, such as sidings big enough to accomodate mile-long trains.
> ...


We will not see 1.5 km trains soon, but some 1 km long are already being tested, so there is some interest.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

XAN_ said:


> And what about freight? I'm aware about fact that UK rail freight is next to none, but still...


Next to none? confused lol sorry

But about freight, I've seen a number of trucks that are joined in two car sets permanently. Not sure what the technical name is, but it just looks like a bar between them


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## Jay (Oct 7, 2004)

JoKo65 said:


> It will be interesting how China will "flood" European railways with an incompatible rolling stock.
> 
> If China wants to come to Europe it will have to accept European and Russian standards, otherwise they will have no chance.


Same thing could be said vice versa, Europe could change and use normal trains. :lol:


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## Momo1435 (Oct 3, 2005)

poshbakerloo said:


> Next to none? confused lol sorry
> 
> But about freight, I've seen a number of trucks that are joined in two car sets permanently. Not sure what the technical name is, but it just looks like a bar between them


The English term is a drawbar. It's stronger then any couplers and cheaper then automatic couplers.


I've seen them on these German Iron Ore cars.


















source: http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/de/car/freight/F/Faals-Falrrs/pix.html

These trains use heavy automatic couplers, but they are not compatible with the Russian or Chinese couplers. 


JoKo65 said:


> Some heavy trains in Germany use the AK69e coupler system:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## K_ (Jan 5, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> European couplers are hideous, outdated and should be just phased out in 10 years.


Buffers have certain advantages though, that AAR style couplers don't have. You can for example bank a train without coupling it, or do things like fly shunting. 

The reason why the US went to knuckle couplers is because the link and pin coupler they had before was indeed hideous and unsafe. US rolling stock didn't generally have buffers before the knuckle coupler.


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## Dakkus (May 12, 2005)

sotavento said:


> Sorry to stop your dreAMS ABOUT world domination but:
> 
> Atlas:
> 
> ...


Even those 10 minutes aren't necessarily required, because the same coupler can very well handle both SA-3 and chain couplings. Such devices are in everyday use in the Finnish Sr2 locomotives, because Finnish railways use chain couplers but some half of cargo traffic comes from Russia, where they use SA-3.

Some pictures of Unilink couplers:


















It is of course possible combining AAR and chain coupler in a similar manner, as well.
A bigger problem between Chinese and European railways are the trains' wheels. Chinese wheels won't pass through European points. But, I figure this problem can be solved, as well


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## Coccodrillo (Sep 30, 2005)

Dakkus said:


> A bigger problem between Chinese and European railways are the trains' wheels. Chinese wheels won't pass through European points. But, I figure this problem can be solved, as well


There is a bigger problem to solve before that!


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## Gadiri (Oct 30, 2009)

Loco + cars







TGV

















Japan


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

Coccodrillo said:


> There is a bigger problem to solve before that!


Yeah, like building an 1435 mm line from china to Europe :lol:


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## KingNick (Sep 23, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ The future of passenger transportation are EMUs, so that point is relatively moot for passenger trains.


Not entirely, since that also makes you inflexible to quickly changing passenger demands in short-distance travel. You see that around Vienna every day how the length of commuter trains changes from daytime to daytime.


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## flierfy (Mar 4, 2008)

KingNick said:


> Not entirely, since that also makes you inflexible to quickly changing passenger demands in short-distance travel. You see that around Vienna every day how the length of commuter trains changes from daytime to daytime.


Coupling and decoupling of individual carriages is a waste of resources. It is way cheaper to drag a couple of expendable carriages along then adjusting the length of a train to the assumed demand of every single tour.


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## Momo1435 (Oct 3, 2005)

And with the automatic couplers it's also easy to couple some EMUs together to make a train longer, flexibility isn't really a problem here. 

The main problem with automatic couplers on EMU is that even if the couplers are the same it doesn't necessarily mean that 2 EMU can be coupled. Different software in different trains, even if they are from the same manufacturer can prevent 2 EMUs running together as 1 train.


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## Dakkus (May 12, 2005)

XAN_ said:


> Yeah, like building an 1435 mm line from china to Europe :lol:


For passenger trains not really, because passenger carriages with variable gauge bogies are only about 4% more expensive than normal carriages and the gauge changing facilities are cheap to build (within the ballpark of a couple of tens of thousands of euros).
According to what I've been told on this forum, the same kind of bogies would, however, increase the cost of a freight wagon by 15%-80%, which is already quite a bit.

But as said, for passenger trains the differences in wheel profiles seem to be the biggest obstacle.


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## XAN_ (Jan 13, 2011)

Of course dedicated passenger line from China to Europe make no sense. Freight line with some local traffic maybe will work.


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## ArtManDoo (Aug 5, 2008)

I have a question regarding to coupling MU-s by scharfenberg couplers.

What about the max speed allowed when coupling? I know that newer MU-s have especial mode for coupling, the speed is about 1km/h. But is there any data about the maximum allowed without doing any harm for the equipment? It shouldn't be very different if to compare by the producers of MU-s?


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## Zero Gravity (Dec 5, 2010)

Anything happening in this department?


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