More Van Dorn couplers at IRM

Many thanks to Bill Wulfert, who has been looking into Van Dorn couplers that are in the museum's collection. Our CA&E wood cars use Van Dorn #16 couplers, which were designed around 1900 for use on the Manhattan Elevated electrification project (which makes sense since the GE 66 motors and DB-15 contactors used on the earliest CA&E wood cars were also designed with the Manhattan Elevated electrification in mind). But Bill has discovered that our Metropolitan-West Side Elevated cars, 2872 and 2888, use a different style of Van Dorn. All photos by Bill Wulfert.

This photo is of the trailer end of the 2888, with some additional lighting Bill brought along, and shows the car's coupler which is a Van Dorn #18. This was one of the types that the company made to be fitted to lengths of rail that would serve as the drawbar. In this case, it seems that the Met used 80# rail.

Here you go - a Van Dorn #18.

It's tough to tell what kind of anchor casting we're looking at here. Even among the Van Dorn illustrations it seems there's some inconsistency in terminology. There are couplers with rail drawbars that are described as "rail draft gear" but in other cases couplers with rail drawbars have a Van Dorn part number listed for their draft gear.

The #18 couplers on the Met cars are very similar to the #16 couplers on the CA&E - given how closely they're numbered, it's possible that the only different is whether they're designed for rail drawbars, though that's pure speculation on my part. But they have no problem coupling to each other, and an illustration of a #18 coupler that was included in the Van Dorn collection donated last year by Larry Larson mentions that it's fitted with a #16 pin and #16 link.

Many thanks to Bill for looking into this further! You can read more about Van Dorn link-and-pin couplers here. So far IRM is known to have CA&E cars with #16 couplers, Met cars with #18 couplers, the Broad Street car with #2350 tight-locks, and CSL 9020 with what I believe is a #1450 tight-lock. EDIT: Joel Ahrendt confirms that our TMER&L interurban cars also have Van Dorn MCB couplers, so at some point I'll see if I can grab some photos thereof and see if they have part numbers cast into them to ID them exactly. Olin Anderson has also suggested that our Chicago Tunnel Company equipment may be fitted with the half-size MCB couplers mentioned here.