Does the conductor know when a car is disconnected?

Question

I was thinking and wondering do trains ever fall apart?.. Like The cars disconnect?

Will the conductor know about it? What about when the brake hoses brake?

Answer 1

Hi Candy. Came too late, but I'll add a few details.  There is the "train line". That's literally a train line that extends from the engines to the last car. The hose couplings are the hoses that hang down beneath each coupler between the cars. While traveling, with out applying brakes, the train line has 90 pounds of air pressure in it. For a long, slow stop, the engineer might reduce the train line to 80 pounds, with all empty cars, or 15 to 18 pounds with loaded cars. Each train is a bit different. Anyway, there's always air pressure in the train line. If a coupler between two cars fails, and sometimes they do, the hose connection comes apart and there's a sudden loss of air pressure. This automatically causes each car to apply emergency braking, and everything comes to a stop. Which is a good thing. Don't want the half of train that broke free to roll in to the stopped half. The car couplers are the weakest part of the train. The moving part of the coupler is called the knuckle, and it's the weakest component of the whole assembly. They're designed to break. A broken knuckle is a quick, cheap, and easy fix. That's better than damaging an entire car which would be expensive and could cause a derailment.

Answer 2

Yes. If the cars are properly connected with their air hoses, if they came apart, all the cars would go into "emergency brake mode." That is the fastest way to stop a train.

For your next question: I don't think I'd better tell you!

Answer 3

Each car is connected to each other with air.  Should say the last car for some reason come loose from the train, the air connection will be broken and the train will go into what they call "emergency".  This is an automatic thing because when the air pressure is lost, it sets the brakes on both the car that is unhooked and the main body of the train.  

Everything stops because the brakes are automatically engaged when they lose air pressure.  

So, everyone will know something happened because the train will stop as quickly as a train can stop.  Whether they know it was a car that came unhooked wouldn't be known until they communicated with the engineer who would have the computer before him telling what the problem was.. Or if the conductor or anyone else who were  in the last car would obviously know what happened if they looked out the front of the car that seperated.

Answer 4

WILL THEY EVER!  when this happens, it's known as "dynamiting"; when the air line breaks, it sounds like a stick of TNT.  Also, since the "Japanese Conductor" [end of train device] is only there to monitor brake line pressure, it will also alert the train crew.