Well the reason I am asking is our car has a good set of springs but the design keeps tension to keep the trap shut vs pop open. Tis why I am asking if anyone else with a troop sleeper has functional traps.

I’ve never worked on one of these personally, either. If the square head is not threaded but locked in place by other means when adjusted, then can you turn it the opposite direction to tension it to spring up, not down? It certainly sounds like it’s adjusted in the wrong direction. Spring steel torsion bars can be tensioned in either direction. The trap doesn’t need to pop up by itself much, just enough to make it easy to grab and lift.

That's my read on it. Standard trap hardware is the spring hinge and a latch to keep it down. Turn the latch and it pops up ready to grab and raise. If your trap doesn't have any additional hardware, I'd say somebody wound the spring in the wrong direction.

Ordinarily I would think so too. But troop sleeper traps are part of the interior floor not out in a vestibule, so tension down may be by design. I just want to be sure before I change it.

It sounds like nobody else has one with working traps.

Let me ask this, how would they raise the trap from inside the car if it didn't spring up? IRM has two of these cars, one of each, and the one with step wells is still in unrestored work service condition and photos show the traps are long gone.

It doesn’t make sense to me that it would be tensioned to hold it down. Otherwise, you be lifting the trap against the spring tension making it harder to lift. The hardware to hold the trap open wasn’t all that substantial so I don’t think you’d want it holding against the spring tension. That would be one hell of an unexpected slam at possibly an inopportune moment of unfortunate circumstance if the latch holding it open let it go or it slipped out of your hand.

My two cents, could be worth nothing.

Can you tell from the one you have whether the door itself would physically block the trap from being opened when the door itself was closed? In most conventional vestibules even if you unlatch the trap it will not open unless the door has been opened. Based on the troop sleeper diagram I have this appears not to be the case here.
In those cars with traps, the traps were located almost exactly where two of the occupants of the car would place their feet while sitting or possibly land leaving their bunks. It seems logical that the downward forcing spring would act as insurance that the trap would not open inadvertently. A spring holding it down would need less force than one intended to open it.
When the doors were opened they would be against the adjacent bunks and the traps would be held up by the doors. I'd need to see an engineering drawing to be sure of how (or even if) this was done but I think it would be fairly simple to design the hinge and the latch so the spring would not significantly impede opening the trap.

Is there anybody out there who actually rode in one of the damn things and knows for sure?

GME

It makes no sense to me that a spring would be anything but a counterbalance against the physical weight of the trap, to help it raise when the holding latch is released. I am not going to pretend wide experience with traps but every one I can remember is spring-assisted to raise.

Adding spring tension to the weight of the trap step would only slam it faster if released.

I have never seen a step with integral counterbalance on the 'other side' of its hings, which is the only other simple mechanical solution.

Someone might look for the arrangements used on those early streamliners with drop-down steps, which appear to deploy by weight. In those, the mechanism is stowed 'up' and drops into position, vs. a trap which is stowed 'down' and has to be raised.

Further food for thought -

1. Later troop sleepers were built without the trap and steps arrangement indicating that someone somewhere may have thought that it was more trouble than it was worth.

2. Most of the passengers carried in these accommodations were testosterone-poisoned young men who as a group were quite capable of overcoming any difficulties presented by either the weight of the trap or the later sill-mounted stirrups.

GME