In the Lone Ranger thread someone mentioned the “funny Janney couplers”.
What I thought to be Janney couplers was what was on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Railr ... iagram.jpg

I thought the Lone Ranger couplers some bogus Hollywood prop fabrication to allow Tonto’s face to be more visible. I fount a frame of a TV spot and copied it below.
Did they actually make these things work during the film? And or did they ever really exist sometime in railroading?

Not a real design; the sort of thing we might expect (for high $$$ from ILM) Two things badly wrong with the design:

1) Unlike the real Janney coupler, this design is very specific about which way the mating cars are facing.

2) The stress on the (putative) locking mechanism is needlessly stupendous. It's lust the opposite of a proper coupler, where any off-center leverage on the knuckle is taken in non-moving castings to the greatest extent possible.

The sad thing is that even if all the research the design team did was go look at Kadee or Clouser couplers at the model-train shop, they'd have gotten the key features of the design right.

Okay, experts: can this coupler even work in service that isn't movie magic? Would it even meet federal law? (Not AAR interchange rules)

I'm inclined to believe that it would be ridiculously easy to pull that thing apart.

the design reminds me of the old Marx tinplate couplers, one car has the nub, the other has the hook arrangement that snaps onto the nub. They were automatic and had uncouplers for them.

I tend to think there might be a purposeful on purpose design for doing inaccuracies, if you represented a real coupler, a million viewers would learn how to uncouple a real coupler.
Do a fake one protects the railroads from potential pranksters, hucksters etc who my want to do damage intentional or not.

But then we have had movies of real trains so who knows whadda...

The coupler design may have been on purpose for the shot design.

I saw the movie, the effects were great, reviewers shot down the movie perhaps more on how the Lone Ranger was characterized. But I think it told a good background on the creation of the Lone Ranger, it isnt a movie like the old serials were after Tonto/Lone Ranger were hooked up. But the movie did give a good old western feel back.

I tend to feel the movie was more focused on the Tonto character than the Lone Ranger, perhaps you may have just titled the movie "Tonto meets the Lone Ranger" instead, thats how it feels.

That design looks like something you'd find on a $20 plastic train set from China, LOL!

Meanwhile, they cast "Janney" into the coupler. Coincidence they used the name of a real design? I think not. So if they know that much, how did they get it so wrong? They had plenty of railroad savvy people on set, presumably all of them knew enough about couplers to know this one is totally bogus.

My money is on this being a deliberate design choice for artistic or other reasons, like it's easier for the stunt man to hang from this one.

It's Hollywood.

A legitimate thought, but why couldn't they have just used link & pin couplers then? It would have been more period and less goofy looking.

you couldnt get that shot with the link and pin, more likely a creative decision.