Coupling Keikyu trains

[bill937ca]

Coupling ins ervice Keikyu trains with passengers. A different perspective from inside the train.

 

 

[Sacto1985]

While interesting, it's nothing like the coupling of the Sunrise Seto/Sunrise Izumo trains at Okayama Station:

 

[bikkuri bahn]

Coupling in service Keikyu trains with passengers.

 

Always like to watch the Keikyu drivers when they are doing crew changes/leaving the cab- very quick and efficient. We don't have rapid coupling like this up here in Hokkaido- they have to hook up a multi-pin connector (looks somewhat like a giant circular serial port) which is kept in the cab and has to be lugged out to track level for hooking up.

[miyakoji]

bill, great find, I've never seen that before.  Pretty amazing.  On a nearby railroad, I was onboard when some sort of coupling or decoupling was done.  The train was on time pulling into the station, and over 5 minutes late leaving.

 

sacto, that's a good one too, by ISO8, who has posted from time to time here in English.  I think you can see other operations like that on JR lines.  The Shirasagi Thunderbird at Maibara (one section of the train comes from Osaka, the other from Nagoya), and the Tamba and Maizuru services at Ayabe come to mind.  Different rolling stock but at least in the case of the Thunderbird, I believe the gangway is opened.

[Sacto1985]

Speaking of coupling Thunderbird trains, here's a video of a 681/683 Series trainset coupling at Kanazawa Station:

 

 

By the way, note in the video I posted earlier how very careful they are in coupling the train. This is because the coupling at Okayama Station is done probably in the middle of the night, so there may be sleeping passengers on both trains.

[Jace]

Interesting Keikyu videos. If only we could do that here in the US. Forget most locomotive hauled equipment since you've got to connect the heavy 480V HEP jumpers but MUs and subways have similar two part automatic couplers. I always get the same answer when I ask the railroad  about combining trains: sometimes you don't get a good couple on the electric portion of the coupler (the box, if you will, beneath the mechanical hook portion of the coupler). This means no consistent electrical continuity which can potentially lead to systems locking out. Yet somehow they do this everyday on the Keikyu...

[bill937ca]

Another video by tsukamototaro.  This one shows a train replacement at Kanagawashinmachi station on Keikyu. Very quick and efficient

 

[KenS]

Interesting Keikyu videos. If only we could do that here in the US. Forget most locomotive hauled equipment since you've got to connect the heavy 480V HEP jumpers but MUs and subways have similar two part automatic couplers. I always get the same answer when I ask the railroad  about combining trains: sometimes you don't get a good couple on the electric portion of the coupler (the box, if you will, beneath the mechanical hook portion of the coupler). This means no consistent electrical continuity which can potentially lead to systems locking out. Yet somehow they do this everyday on the Keikyu...

 

Two things leap to mind: first, Japan's frequency and throughness of maintenance is probably a lot higher than some western railroads (particularly in the U.S., where passenger railroading is perpetually underfunded), and second most of Japan's commuter trains have used a locally-designed "Shibata" coupler since the 1930s.  The Shibata is similar to and derived from the west's Scharfenburg/Tomlinson couplers (closer to the latter), but not identical. There may be something about it that makes it more reliable on the electrical coupling.  With all of the Japan-designed trains and cars in use by U.S. commuter/subway lines, it's possible there are some Shibata's here as well, but I've never heard of any.

 

It's also likely that Japanese trainsets that couple/uncouple frequently were specifically designed with that use in mind, whereas western train/coupler design probably assumes coupling would be infrequent and done in a yard to form sets for use, since that's how they're used.

 

There's also the need to do a brake test any time the brake line is broken/connected, which means either more time spent by the conductor (delays) or more staff to walk the train after it's coupled/uncoupled. The lower frequency of trains in the U.S. makes it harder to justify extra staff.

[Jace]

Ken, I haven't seen Shibata couplers (pretty much all the transit couplers are Wabco or Dellner) so I don't know if they've done anything different with the electrical pins or cover design. I wouldn't expect there to be much difference. The complaints I've heard is that contact becomes questionable mainly in rain or snow. Having said this, transit tends to be very conservative here. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they didn't get a good connection just one time but the delay was enough to get someone in trouble - I'll make sure this never happens again! By the way, brake tests are required only when switching controls: separate a train into two parts, the new train does a brake test, put a train together, no need to do the FRA test so long as the same cab is used.