The Westinghouse Friction Draft Gear

Friction Draft Gear F I 'A HE inadequate and unsatisfactory character of existing draft-gear arrangements, resulting in frequent accidents and interruptions to traffic, with their attendant heavy costs, are too well known and appreciated by railway managers to require extended comment. c di fFic ul ties s u ri oundi n this featme of railway construction and operation are illustrated by the fact that although many other details of locomotive and car construction have been standardized, yet—after half a century of effort, involving thousands of changes in form and detail__no draft gear has, until now, been produced having sufficient merit to justify its general adoption as a standard. The difficulties due to weak draft gear have been enormously increased durin»- the past few years, not only on account of the employment of heavy cars of both wood and steel construction in trains of great weight, but also by reason of the greater power of the locomotives required to move these trains. The following points are in illustration of the power and force problems involved, and of the difficulties to be overcome : First.—The normal maximum direct draw-bar pull of a locomotive is about 25 per cent, of the weight of the driving wheels upon the rails, and, according to the weight of the locomotives in use, varies from 18,000 to 55,000 pounds. 9