Re: [VIC] Wooden cars at high speed (was: [VIC] Parallel run)

[Mark Bau <markbau@altavista.com>]

> 
> The PL cars stayed gas lit and screw coupled for a while for the very
> reason that they had weak frames. In later years, both were added without
> any frame strengthening. Look at what happened to the PL cars from the
> torsional forces of the auto couplers!
> 
> Cheers
> David
=
 What exactly is "torsional force" in relation to auto couplers? Maybe you
mean the buffing force that gets transmitted through the frame when a
vehicle is auto coupled versus the situation with screw couplers where the
buffing force is transmitted to the buffers.

This argument has a grain of validity if you are talking about buffing
forces. The forces created through draw would be insignificant between the 2
couplers however as all of the weight is still going through the frame and
PL's never in their lives had much more than 350 tons behind them which
became their trailing tonnage limit in later years.

BTW, the PL's did not stay gaslit as long as they did because of their
frames. They stayed gaslit because VR was cheap. RS corre' shows that
various proposals were put forward to convert them but they were knocked
back due to cost. A crash and burn somewhere in the world forced VR to
realize that gas lighting wasn't such a good idea, regardless of the cost of
conversion.

Glad I could help

Mark