>>1831659>Janney and Willison coupler heads can move up and down freelyI feel extremely stupid not having ever realized that before. Should have been obvious from the look of them and the way they're fitted to rolling stock. That does make my earlier question irrelevant, unless you were to add some vertical centering stuff to the Janney, à la Type H
>>1823037>>1834452>>1834556>>1834574Seems to me that you have to balance it between no slack, in which case you increase the risk of the train's weakest coupling failing (typically, when applying power while the tail of the train brakes haven't fully released yet), and excessive slack which will increase the wear on the loose couplings due to excessive jerk. From a european point of view, the latter seems more problematic as we hardly ever go for push-pull or distributed power, meaning the couplers have to withstand all of the tractive effort being at the front and most of the braking effort being at the back (the latter being an issue mostly for passenger rolling stock).
>>1837652Since you're mentioning shunting, is it even practical to hump shunt with automatic couplers? Feels like you'd rather have buffer and chains for that but I have no idea whether unlocked Janey and Buckeyes would reengage from being pushed.
And do you guys have some of those remote controlled shunting couplers like on the continent?
>>1837652 
