Pfauder steel milk car question

[nkalanaga]

Peteski:  The reason I thought that British coupler might be an aftermarket one for use with Continental wagons is that, as shown in your last picture, the usual European couplers have the link attached directly to the hook at one end. 

The British picture has the older(?) 3-links-of-chain British couplers on both wagons, and a screw-link coupler that is separate from either one.  Do the British and European railways ever interchange cars, by ferry or tunnel?

[peteski]

Peteski:  The reason I thought that British coupler might be an aftermarket one for use with Continental wagons is that, as shown in your last picture, the usual European couplers have the link attached directly to the hook at one end. 

The British picture has the older(?) 3-links-of-chain British couplers on both wagons, and a screw-link coupler that is separate from either one.  Do the British and European railways ever interchange cars, by ferry or tunnel?

Not sure, but I suspect that they did interchange cars.  The photo was just a random photo  I chose from a Google search. Maybe it is a photo of 2 pieces of RR equipment coupled in some RR museum?

[svedblen]

And people wonder why European trains seem so small compared to North American trains...?

There's no way that coupling system can handle anywhere near the load that ours can!

True! This is from a Swedish Wikipedia page on coupling systems (translated to English by Google and me  ):

The European buffer and chain coupling system is now considered to be a major disadvantage for the competitiveness freight trains. Partly because it is too weak and limits the train lengths and partly because it requires manual handling with high risks, cost increases and time delays. A new couple has been standardized by UIC (the International Union of Railways). This allows for coupling with both the old screw coupler and the Russian automatic coupling, which also Swedish ore trains already have. It includes simultaneous coupling of brake air, power and signal lines. But there are still no decisions on general introduction. It is considered expensive to manufacture.

[nkalanaga]

Besides the limits of their couplers, there's another reason European freight trains are shorter/lighter than ours.  Their railroads are optimized for passenger service, and the freight trains have to fit in between the passengers.  Thus, they usually run at passenger train speeds.  When the first railroads were built, they already had relatively high population densities, and there were a lot of people looking for a faster way to travel.  Freight, on  the other hand, wasn't that important, because all of the countries were more or less self sufficient.

Our system has long been optimized for freight service, with a few exceptions.  Passenger trains may be faster than freights, and have priority, but there were relatively few of them, and the freight trains could take sidings to avoid delaying them.  With the long distances, and relatively low population density, we carried a lot more freight than passengers, especially in the early years of railroads.   That included raw materials from the frontier to developed areas, food from newly opened farmlands, and "exports" from the developed areas for developing the frontier.

[OldEastRR]

Weren't the milk car tanks lined with glass? So they were basically large thermoses, which (if you're old enough to remember) were glass-lined and could be broken through rough handling? I can't see car builders putting extra stuff on freight cars unless it had a vital purpose, and not because "it looks cool, man".

[nickelplate759]

I think glass-lined tanks were/are for sanitary reasons.  The classic thermos bottle is a little different - it's a glass vessel inside a partial vacuum, to reduce conduction of heat into or out of the liquid contents.  It's the vacuum that's does that, not so much the glass.   Solid glass itself is not a sufficiently good thermal insulator, albeit far better than metal.