Directional reference for trailing locomotives and railroad cars

Abstract

A universal directional reference for trailing locomotives and railroad cars employs a two wire mating connector for each end of the car or locomotive, each wire having a male contact at one end and a female contact at the opposite end and in a sense opposite to the other wire. A positive polarity established on one conductor having its male contact at the leading end of the controlling locomotive causes the same polarity to appear on the female contact at the rear end of said locomotive which is connected to the male contact of the next car or locomotive thereby sustaining the pattern throughout the train. Reverse orientation of any trailing unit automatically swaps the internal polarity of its trainline wires to compensate for the otherwise reverse direction of travel.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONTrailing locomotives in a multiple-unit consist are controlled from the lead unit by means of a known system using twenty seven wires extending through each locomotive unit. Connections are made to each adjacent unit through a twenty seven conductor jumper cable. Two of the wires used for directional setup are designated as forward and reverse. These are swapped at one end of the locomotive and swapped back to normal in the jumper cable. With this arrangement, any locomotive oriented in the reverse position will receive its forward or reverse signal in the opposite wire of the pair, and thus establish a direction of travel identical with the lead locomotive.Slave locomotives, situated elsewhere in the train, are connected to each other in the above manner but must receive their commands from the controlling unit by radio. Even with error-free communication, the forward and reverse commands will arrive at the slave consist with ambiguous meaning because of ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

A variation of the above method would avoid the need for manual setup by using trainline polarity to directly control direction of movement. For example, forward operation could be specified by positive polarity on the trainline con

Problems solved by technology

However, this would require an alternative directional reference for trailing units at least as automatic and foolproof as the present swapped wire arrangement.

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