You can see Danish practice of this at 6:00

https://youtu.be/AGs67NDyBZE

It was standard practice until recently, but we have in fact tightened our safety standards. Plus, there is very little carload switching in Denmark anymore. We don't have any hump yards or interchange yards.

Yikes! The wheel lathe must get quite a workout....

Skates were used in some Chicago yards into the 1960s. See Chip Kraft's articles in Trains on yards.

Commenting from a country which also uses three link screw couplings centered between buffers I cannot recall seeing anyone controlling a shunt movement from "inside". It is certainly forbidden in the UK and should be in mainland Europe also.

I assume the idiot who was filmed "considered" that because he was in radio communication with the driver of the loco on the shunt movement.....the performance was "safe". It was not and he was simply "showing off" for the videographer.

Rules (and commonsense) dictate that whenver possible - with radio controlled shunt moves - the person in charge of the move should always be in a safe location (and visible if possible) even when using a "secure" radio system.

View at 07:50. Not saying I endorse it, just saying it is what it is.

https://youtu.be/-aCk7D2G9cI

I watched stand-between-the-buffer couplings, albeit at very slow speeds in Switzerland (Geneva) as recently as two years ago. This crew didn't hurry anything; it appeared they had an entire shift to move two box cars from the post office track to the other side of the yard.

Bob

Hurrying, rushing, running in performance of duties,
that's what will get people hurt or killed. There's a degree to which keeping things moving and doing things efficiently can be done safely. You need a good crew for that, though, and a crew that knows what all the other crew members are doing.

Now you're in the small railway museum where most of the older volunteers have always done things a certain way, and the young volunteers are excited to prove themselves. Maybe some volunteers only make it up on the weekends, maybe some only make it up once every few months. "Taking it easy" will go a long ways towards making sure everyone goes home in the same condition they arrived in.

When I saw it done in London in the 60s, the cars were brought together before the workman went in to connect. He did have to climb under the buffers, which looked awkward at best.

Also, in the movie the Train (referred to above) is a sequence when those couplings were disconnected while the train was in motion. And, if you watch that with the director's comments, you learn that the guy that was doing it was a high-paid French actor that had no idea what he was doing and shouldn't have been the one doing it--but was being macho to keep up with Bert Lancaster.

On the link and screw couplers I would see in Europe, they would go between cars and throw the link over the hook as the vehicles impacted and the buffers momentarily compressed. I always wondered what would happen if they loosened the screw and put the link over AFTER everything was stopped and then tightened down the screw. Would that still leave things too loose since presumably the buffers are not compressed?

It would make the coupling process more time consuming. Assuming the link is already at the correct length, then the most annoying thing is the cars stop just an inch too far apart, and now you can't get the link over without fooling around with the screw.

No, you don't want the buffers compressed at all, on straight track. If significant curvature is expected, you have to loosen all the links to create slack between the buffers. We do this when transitioning from the main line to a branch line.

Modern standards in Denmark are a reflection of the traffic. Carload freight is almost non existant, and all passenger traffic is trainsets with automatic couplers. There is not a lot of coupling going on daily, and that means crew members are not as experienced in it. So the task is a little slower because there is less experience and there is less incentive to care how fast it is.

I would imagine the links need to be tight enough that they can't pop off the hooks. Interestingly, after watching the youtube of the German coupling, there were several others of similar situations in India. There, they seemed to place the link after the cars came to rest. They also used an extra piece, a piece of steel bar stock bent into a U shaped shackle, placed over the link with a safety pin inserted under the hook. It appears the purpose was to ensure the link couldn't pop out of the hook.

No, that is not the way it works. The links can be completely loose if necessary for curve clearance. Buffer compression is not desired on a continuous basis.

It seems the hooks have a lot of extension back toward the car... so the links can't come off with the buffers just touching. So, if you want to get the link on without lengthening it, you need to drop it on while the buffers are compressed.

Or you can do it the way this Indian does it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehBq4bFWneA

At about 3:00 you'll see him apply that extra shackle I mentioned. And again at 4:20 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE-7Qptga7c

If you don't care what the slack is after coupling, then buffer compression is irrelevant. If you care about the slack, then you need to either a) adjust the screw after coupling or b) make the coupling dynamically as the videos show.