page_title: Janney coupler
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Janney coupler / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertisement for Burn's Automatic Car Coupler, manufactured by Syracuse Malleable Iron Works.
context_page_description: Janney couplers are a semi-automatic design, also known as American, AAR, APT, ARA, MCB, knuckle, or center-buffer couplers, which were first patented in 1873 by Eli H. Janney. Andrew Jackson Beard was amongst various inventors that made a multitude of improvements to the knuckle coupler; Beard's patents were U.S. Patent 594,059 granted 23 November 1897, which then sold for approximately $50,000, and U.S. Patent 624,901 granted 16 May 1899.
  In the UK, several versions of Janney couplers are fitted to a limited number of coaches, multiple units, wagons and locomotives.
  Janney Type E, Type F InterLock, and Type H TightLock couplers are compatible subtypes, each intended for specific rail car types: goods freight wagons, tank wagons, rotary dump gondolas, passenger coaches, etc.
  Prior to the formation of the Association of American Railroads these were known as or Master Car Builder couplers. In 1934 the MCB was renamed as the AAR.
  Knuckle couplers of the 1880s and 1890s had a chaotic mixture of proprietary internal components, but all had the standard MCB external contour, making them compatible.
context_section_description: Janney was a dry goods clerk and former Confederate Army officer from Alexandria, Virginia, who used his lunch hours to whittle from wood an alternative to the link and pin coupler.  The term Buckeye comes from the nickname of the US state of Ohio, the "Buckeye state" and the Ohio Brass Company which originally marketed the coupling.
  In 1893, satisfied that an automatic coupler could meet the demands of commercial railroad operations and, at the same time, be manipulated safely, the US Congress passed the Safety Appliance Act.  Its success in promoting switch-yard safety was stunning. Between 1877 and 1887, approximately 38% of all railworker accidents involved coupling.  That percentage fell as the railroads began to replace link and pin couplers with automatic couplers.  By 1902, only two years after the SAA's effective date, coupling accidents constituted only 4% of all employee accidents.  Coupler-related accidents dropped from nearly 11,000 in 1892 to just over 2,000 in 1902, even though the number of railroad employees steadily increased during that decade.
  When the Janney coupling was chosen to be the American standard, there were 8,000 patented alternatives to choose from. The only significant disadvantage of using the AAR (Janney) design is that sometimes the drawheads need to be manually aligned. 
  During the transition period from link-and-pin couplers, knuckle couplers on many locomotives had a horizontal gap and a vertical hole in the knuckle itself to accommodate, respectively, a link and a pin, to enable it to couple to vehicles which were still equipped with the older link-and-pin  couplers.
caption: Janney MCB5 Transition Coupler
  1894 Syracuse.Burns (make.model)
  SplitKnuckle Mates To Legacy
  Link&Pin Or Miller Coupler
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