Photograph of the back of a freight train. A worker wearing a high visibility vest is standing on a ladder on the rear of the train car next to a sign that says in large red all caps "DO NOT HUMP"
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[–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's amazing how we live in a society that has landed men on the moon, a helicopter on Mars and can build cars that see the road using artificial eyes, yet the state of the art way of re-sorting freight trains is still slowly pushing them down a hill and paying people to recouple them (often using screw-and-hook couplers, a design from the 19th century) and manually connect brake hoses. There's no electrical connection to be made, everything is simple pneumatics, and the "rear lights" are reflective signs.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago (1 child)

    it's one of those things that are just kind of physically optimal, like how we still use flour and bake bread.
    they move such an absurd amount of weight that no other mode of shipping can compare, and sending them down a hill is effectively just a weird form of battery power. (you charge it by moving them up the hill, then discharge as it goes down).

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago

    The thing is that the screw-and-hook coupler is absolutely not optimal. People are run over during shunting every year. A fully automatic coupler was devised in 1904 by Karl Scharfenberg, and it's now used on almost all modern passenger trains. Using it on cargo trains would require retrofitting all carriages in the entirety of the European Single Market.

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