EP2219929B1

EP2219929B1 - A hood for a railway goods wagon and a method for its assembly

Info

Publication number: EP2219929B1
Application number: EP08852886A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Peter Linde; Gustav Lundkvist; Henrik NYSTRÖM
Original assignee: K Technology AB
Current assignee: K Technology AB
Priority date: 2007-11-23
Filing date: 2008-11-20
Publication date: 2012-04-25
Anticipated expiration: 2028-11-20
Also published as: WO2009065583A1; ES2386597T3; SE532756C2; SE0702590L; EP2219929A1; ATE554985T1

Abstract

A hood (1a, 1b) for a railway wagon is self-supporting and slidably, movably or removably arranged on a railway wagon chassis. It comprises mutually interlocking longitudinal hood profiles (9a-d) on whose ends stabilizing members (3, 4) are attached.

Description

Field of the Invention

The invention relates to a hood for a railway wagon, the hood being self-supporting and slidably, movably or removably arranged on a railway wagon chassis.
The invention also relates to a method of assembling such a hood.

Background of the Invention

A hood according to the invention is a development of and a significant improvement of a hood used on railway goods wagons such as the one described in SE-C-508 987 (corresponding to DE-A-4,317,013 ). SE-C-508 987 shows a multi-purpose railway goods wagon for transportation of cars or other goods, the wagon having a hood construction of individually movable segments for bulk goods loading from above. Such a goods wagon comprises a chassis with wheel pairs or bogies connected thereto and one or more hood units, which are moveable in the longitudinal direction of the wagon between a closed and an open position to enhance loading and unloading. Another hood for a vehicle is known from US-A-1,357,119 , which discloses a coal car cover. The coal car cover comprises a plurality of semi-circular supporting members which are spaced longitudinally. Longitudinally disposed spaced slats are supported by the support members and the slats have reduced tongues adapted to fit in correspondingly shaped slots in front and rear support members.
DE-U-297 16 556 discloses a slidable hood for a railway wagon. The hood comprises a plurality of aluminum profiles provided with tongues and grooves, respectively. According to DE29716556 profiles are joined by positioning pairs of tongues and grooves relative to each other to form weak but steering joints and then rolling the formed joints so that the tongue/groove pairs are deformed and permanently joined.
Hood units for railway wagons are often designed as a framework of for example steel profiles, upon which one or more layers of surface material, typically being steel or aluminum, is fastened. Also, rivet heads, bolt heads, profile section joints and other means are often used, thus making the outer surface of the hood irregular and uneven.
When assembling known hoods, a lot of time is spent on welding, riveting, or otherwise attaching the surface material to the frame. Welding aluminum is difficult, especially for double-wall designs, where it can be difficult to reach the appropriate welding points. The quality of each produced hood is highly depending on the skill of the persons assembling the hood.
The limited strength of many of the commonly used surface materials limits the maximum distance between steel profiles and thus introduces additional joints, whereby the assembly time is increased, the weight of the construction is increased and more surface irregularities are produced.
Many railway wagons are left standing on railway yards or railway stations with a lot of passing people. Hence, these wagons provide good surfaces for advertising. Graffiti artists have also recognized the value of these "display surfaces", and thus, many railway wagons are painted with graffiti or tags. Since railway wagons are often designed with a lot of irregular surfaces, they are difficult to clean, paint and apply/remove decals to/from.
Hence, an improved design of a hood for a railway wagon would be advantageous and in particular such a hood that requires a minimum of manual work to assemble, that provides surfaces good for printing or sticking decals to, that is lightweight yet rigid and that can only be assembled in such a way that the quality of all produced hoods is substantially consistent.

Summary of the Invention

Accordingly, the present invention seeks to mitigate or eliminate one or more of the above identified deficiencies in the art and disadvantages, singly or in any combination, and solves the above mentioned problems by providing a hood and a corresponding method of its assembly according to the appended claims.
The hood is self-supporting and slidably, movably or removably arranged on a railway wagon chassis and is characterized in that it comprises mutually interlocking longitudinal hood profiles on whose ends stabilizing members are attached.
The method of its assembly is characterized in that interlocking, longitudinal profiles are assembled to form a hood body by forcing them together for mutual interlocking or snap-locking, and that stabilizing members are fastened at the respective ends of the formed hood body.
The present invention has the advantages over prior art that it provides a hood that is easy to assemble, has low weight, is self-supporting and provides substantially planar and even surfaces, suitable for printing on or sticking decals to. It also provides a method for hood assembly that is quick and easy to perform. The hood and the method of its assembly according to the invention makes it easier to achieve consistent build-quality.

Description of Drawings

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a railway wagon provided with hoods according to the invention.
Fig. 2 is an exploded perspective view of a hood according to the invention.
Fig. 3 is a cross-sectional view of a double-wall interlocking profile according to the invention.
Fig. 4 is an enlarged cross-sectional view of an interlocking joint between two profiles according to the invention, shown in a pre-assembled position.
Fig. 5 is an enlarged cross-sectional view of an interlocking joint between two profiles according to the invention, shown in an assembled position.
Fig. 6 is a perspective view depicting the inside of a hood according to the invention.
Fig. 7 is a cross-sectional view of an assembled hood body.

Detailed Description of Embodiments

The following description focuses on an embodiment of the present invention applicable to a railway wagon for transportation of cars or goods according to Fig. 1. However, it will be appreciated that the invention is not limited to this application but may be applied to many other types of vehicles with slidable, moveable or removable hoods, such as truck trailers or freight ships.
In this embodiment a hood for a railway wagon according to Fig. 1 is provided. The wagon consists of two interconnected wagon portions A provided with wheels on a chassis B. The chassis B are provided with a fixed end wall C at the end of each wagon portion. A wagon portion A features two hood units 1. A hood unit 1 comprises two hoods 1a, 1b, which are preferably attached to each other at their upper longitudinal portions. The inner sides of the hoods face each other and the longitudinal interconnected portions of the hoods are aligned with the longitudinal direction of the railway wagon. A hood unit 1 is normally sized, attached or otherwise adapted so that is slidable over or under a corresponding hood unit in front it or behind it on the same wagon portion, in order to enhance loading or unloading of the wagon.
As shown in Fig. 2, each hood 1a, 1b comprises three main elements, namely a hood body 2 and two stabilizing members or profiles 3, 4 provided with internal flanges 5 for supporting the ends of the hood body.
Each hood body 2 has as its main constituents mutually interlocking longitudinal hood profiles, which are to be described below and have reference numerals 9a-d. Here it should be understood that the meaning of an interlocking profile is a profile that may be assembled by simply forcing it together with another interlocking profile in a correct manner to thereby achieve a strong and fully functional joint. Substantially no tools or operations such as screwing, drilling, riveting, rolling etc. are needed in order to achieve a strong joint between the profiles. Fig. 3 exemplifies a cross-section of an interlocking hood profile 9a. The profile has inner and outer walls of substantially planar or slightly curved shape, positioned at a distance from each other and connected by cross-walls. The profile has a male-like interlocking means 6 on one longitudinal end of its cross-section and female-like interlocking means 7 on the other longitudinal end. The length of the profile may be about 7 m, the width about 300 mm, the height about 30 mm, the thickness of material about 3 mm and the weight about 30 kg.
As shown in Figs. 4 and 5, two profiles are designed to be joined or interconnected by first positioning a first male-like means 6a of a first profile into a first female-like means 7a of the second profile and then rotating the profiles along an axis running through the first and second interlocking means in a direction along the longitudinal direction of the profiles, until mutual interlocking or snap-locking is achieved between a second male- and female-like interlocking means 6b, 7b provided on the first and second profile respectively. Thus, the first male-like means and the first-female like means together form a hinge joint. Also, the second male-like means and the second female-like means together form a snaplocking joint.
It should be understood that the hinge joint has an open position in which the male-like means may easily be positioned in the female-like means without deforming the male-like and female-like means to be joined. The hinge joint also has a closed position in which the hinge joint keeps the joined profiles from being translated relative to each other in a plane perpendicular to an axis along the longitudinal direction of the profiles but allows them to be rotated relative to each other.
Here, it should also be understood that one function of the snaplocking joint is to keep the hinge joint in its closed position so that the profiles are prevented from rotating relative to each other. This combination of hinge joint and snap locking joint guarantees a strong and easy-to-assemble connection between the joined profiles.
As shown in Fig. 6, each of the stabilizing members 3, 4 is also provided with one or more internal ribs 8 for making it more rigid. The ribs 8 extend in a direction substantially perpendicular to the inner surface of the stabilizing member. The stabilizing members are designed to cover openings of cavities located in the longitudinal profiles of the hood body and also to keep the longitudinal profiles from being lengthwisely displaced and from being rotated relative to each other. Also, as shown in Fig. 6, a hood according to the invention is self-supporting in the sense that it does not need any intermediate support members or frame parts in order to be rigid enough to withstand outer forces. The fact that the hood is self-supporting and designed without intermediate support members also brings the further advantage that the need of support members attached to the railway wagon chassis decreases, thus enhancing access to the wagon for loading and unloading.
As shown in Fig. 7, the hood body 2 comprises profiles of varying cross section. Some of the profiles, such as the straight profiles 9a, have identical cross section, and hence they are interchangeable during assembly. Other profiles, such as the end profiles 9b, 9c, are designed for connection to the railway wagon or any other body not being part of the hood. Apart from the straight profiles 9a, the hood body also comprises curved profiles 9d. The end profiles 9b, 9c may be provided with interlocking means on only one longitudinal side, since an end profile usually only has to be interlockably attached to one other profile. Most other profiles are provided with interlocking means on two longitudinal sides, as exemplified in Fig. 3, in order to enable interlocking attachment to two other profiles.
The three main elements of the hood are preferably produced by extruding aluminum into profiles. After the stabilizing members have been extruded, they are bent to follow the shape of the hood body cross-section.
When assembling a hood according to the invention the interlocking longitudinal profiles 9a-d are assembled to form a hood body 2 by forcing them together for mutual interlocking or snap-locking and then fastening the stabilizing members at the respective ends of the formed hood body. Once the stabilizing members 3, 4 have been positioned on the ends of the hood body, they are fixed to the hood body, preferably by means of welding, riveting, screwing or gluing.
As shown in Fig. 7, the profiles are preferably designed so that in a joint between two profiles, the uppermost profile has its interlocking means arranged so they protrude downwards outside the interlocking means of the underlying profile, in order to keep water from flowing down into cavities formed between the interlocking means of the two profiles.
In a practical case, the longitudinal hood profiles are made of aluminum, but they could equally well be made of plastic.

Claims

A hood (1a, 1b) for a railway wagon, the hood (1a, 1b) being self-supporting and slidably, movably or removably arranged on a railway wagon chassis and wherein the hood (1a, 1b) comprises hood profiles (9a-d) on whose ends stabilizing members (3, 4) are fastened, characterized in that the hood profiles (9a-d) are longitudinal and mutually interlocking.
A hood according to claim 1, wherein the hood profiles (9a-d) are made of aluminum.
A hood according to claim 1, wherein the hood profiles (9a-d) are made of plastic.
A hood according to any of claim 1-3, characterized in that each of a plurality of the hood profiles (9a-d) is provided with a male-like interlocking means (6) on one longitudinal end of its cross-section and female-like interlocking means (7) on the other longitudinal end of its cross-section, wherein the male-like means (6) is adapted to fit with the female-like means (7) so that a first profile provided with a first male-like means (6a) and a second male-like means (6b) and a second profile provided with a first female-like means (7a) and a second female-like means (7b) are allowed to interact by positioning the first male-like means (6a) into the first female-like means (7a) of the second profile and wherein the profiles are allowed to rotate around an axis running through the first means (6a, 7a) in a direction along the longitudinal direction of the profiles, until mutual interlocking or snap-locking is achieved between the second male- and female-like interlocking means (6b, 7b) provided on the first and second profile respectively.
A method of assembling a hood (1a, 1b), the hood being self-supporting and slidably, movably or removably arranged on a railway wagon chassis, characterized in that interlocking longitudinal profiles (9a-d) are assembled to form a hood body (2) by first positioning a first male-like means (6a) of a first profile into a first female-like means (7a) of the second profile and then rotating the profiles around an axis running through the first and second interlocking means in a direction along the longitudinal direction of the profiles, until mutual interlocking or snap-locking is achieved between a second male- and female-like interlocking means (6b, 7b) provided on the first and second profile respectively.