United States container well cars.

Question

Can anyone tell me why there is glad hands in the middle of container well cars?

In photo below.

http://flickr.com/photos/nikonn90s/2731177228/sizes/l/

Answer 1

GREAT question!   Those are for single-car testing the air brakes.  

A typical double-stack car is 5 wells between 6 trucks.  But as far as the air brakes are concerned, the car is three separate cars each with two trucks.  The "cars" defined by wells 1, 3 and 5 have standard air brake equipment operating on their two trucks.  

When they test that equipment, they need a way to separate the brake pipe so they can test the brakes on each of the three "cars" independently.  And it needs to be a simple, common connection, so that some roving carman in a pickup truck doesn't go "Whoops, left the adapter at the shop".   Voila!  Use normal gladhands.  

Answer 2

Yeeeeeeip.

Answer 3

Inexpensive flexible couplers between car sections

using already existing parts readily available

ingeniously simple and reliable

(for a change)

Answer 4

It sounds good to me too.

Answer 5

rango's answer sounds good to me