On Feb 14, 10:34*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
On 2/14/2012 12:57 PM, Hagbard Celine wrote:

A friend of mine had a glider shipped from the East coast to
Washington state by rail and the managed to do some significant damage
to it. They must hav dropped the trailer while loading or unloading it
from the rail car.

I spoke to a couple of people at the SSA convention who strongly advised
against rail transport in the US for gliders in trailers. Apparently,
the cars crashing together when switched from one train and re-coupled
onto another train is too forceful for most trailers, and the gliders
are damaged.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

Eric,

I had a project that for one day put me in a rail "Hump Yard". No,
not that kind of hump yard, unfortunately. A hump yard is sort of a
marshalling yard with a slight hill where a locomotive pushes cars up
to the crest. The cars are uncoupled and allowed to roll, via the
help of gravity, down the gentle slope and they are directed by many
switches in the tracks to the right spot as a new "train" is built.
Fascinating to watch. At least for a while.

While the rail cars are rolling very slowly, there is a tremendous
mass moving which has a lot of energy. When the moving car hits a
parked rail car, there's a lot of energy expended. WHAM! Even at a
slow walking speed, it's amazing how much of a "WHAM" that is
produced. There were many rail cars carrying new automobiles and many
times, when the rail cars "collided", the automotive alarms were set
off.

Some of the rail cars were the open top gondolas carrying scrap
metal. Some of the metal bits were big and heavy chunks of steel that
would "leave a mark" if one hit you. And lots of the parts were
strewn around the tracks, no doubt ejected when a rolling car
connected to a stopped car. You don't want to be close to the cars
when they are getting ready to slam into stopped cars.

Interesting is that the slowly rolling rail cars are very quiet.
That's one of the dangers of working there. Never stand with your
back facing the direction of where the cars are coming from. One can
be approaching, again at a slow walking speed, and you just don't hear
it. Eerie!