Sliding wall arrangement for covered railroad freight cars

Abstract

The sliding wall includes a central wall section and two end wall sections, with the sections being co-planar in the closed state and movable, transversely of the car, out of the closing plane and into a shifting plane in which they are displaceable longitudinally of the car past closed wall sections. During shifting, the sliding wall sections are supported by rollers engageable with a rail, provided in an upper longitudinal stringer, and with the outer lateral surface of an outer lower longitudinal supporting beam, the stringer and the supporting beam forming, in cooperation with two corner posts, a side frame of the freight car. The upper rail is a single rectilinear and uninterrupted rail extending substantially the full length of the upper stringer. Each end section has, in the upper portion of its end adjacent the central section, an outwardly opening pocket having a horizontal catch member extending thereacross. The central section has, at the upper portion of each of its ends adjacent an end section, a sickle-shape catch lever pivotal on a horizontal axis parallel to the length of the car and, in the closing position of the sections, projecting into the pocket of the adjacent end section and engaging behind the catch member. Angle levers are oscillatable about horizontal pivots adjacent the bottom end of the central or center section and carry ball rollers on one end engageable with the supporting beam and, on their other end, hook portions which can pass through cut-outs in the supporting beam to engage against the inner lateral surface thereof. The catch levers and the angle levers are commonly operated by a known actuating mechanism. An oscillatable shaft supports the central section during its movement between the closing and shifting planes. When the center section is shifted to completely overlap an end section, the end section may also be shifted together with the center section. For this purpose, the upper edge of the central or center section has cut-outs permitting the supporting rollers of the end section to move from the closing plane into the shifting plane.