I have seen a number of recent photos of industrial railways using long bars of metal or wood to couple vehicles together, such as the Honister Slate Mine railway ( http://www.ingr.co.uk/images/honister06.jpg ) which only opened in 1998 and is still working. Does anyone know why these are used instead of normal couplings? Interestingly, there are not a lot of these type of couplings in older photos, so maybe it is a modern thing.
Before the standardisation of couplings (the buck eye or knuckle) long coupling bars were often used. On industrial, self contained concerns, if the chassis was shorter that the extremities of the wagon body, the long connecting bars are used. For an absolute example, look at how transporter wagons in use on the NG lines of eastern Europe often use extended coupling bars to cope with different lengths of the SG wagons that are being piggy-backed.
Paul
I wonder why they are being used again now.
In the world of non-standard gauge railways I doubt that their use had ever stopped. For example, the diesel tank "wagon" and the luggage "wagon" on the Hythe Pier Railway both have long coupling bars.
The Bure Valley railway uses coupling bars made from a scaffold pole with a caravan hock on both ends! Each vehicle has a tow ball fitted:
(https://forum.009society.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trainsferriesbuses.co.uk%2Fimages%2F2012_06-bvr-02.jpg&hash=00cce59dbe5521440604132af816f543aa24c076)
(Originating web page: http://www.trainsferriesbuses.co.uk/bvr.htm)
(https://forum.009society.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cowgill.org.uk%2FBVR%2Fearly%2F1990114.jpg&hash=2c91dd1f9c8f2d36dfffe5646852e99d22db5156)
(Originating web page: http://www.cowgill.org.uk/BVR/early/index.html)
Brian Meldon
Aha! The nearby Alford Valley Railway uses the same ball hitch technique as seen here.
http://web.undiscoveredscotland.com/alford/railwaymuseum/ (http://web.undiscoveredscotland.com/alford/railwaymuseum/)
I assumed it was not de rigueur so kept quiet :-[
In the local Doric the d can be clipped to sound more like a t. The NG tourist railway terminates at the now defunct Alford Station seen in the background. An elderly friend of my wife's says that as a girl great hilarity was to be had when the train manager conductor used to call out what sounded like "alight here for a fart". ;D