Welcome to the Trainscapes segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, Trainscapes will feature train content including videos of trains and behind the scenes action of trains and locomotives. Some people have an interest in seeing trains, and we here at Geek Alabama aim to please the train lovers!
A freight train three miles long rounds a curve at 50 miles per hour. The front locomotive is already on straight track. The last cars haven’t entered the curve yet. Every coupler in between is being pulled sideways at a slight angle. The train weighs 20,000 tons. Nothing derails.
Why doesn’t it just straighten itself out? Why don’t the couplers, each one bent at a slight angle to the next, simply yank the middle cars off the rails and pull the whole thing into a straight line?
What’s actually holding it together?
