Why does Australia have a different train coupling system than America?

Re chopper couplings, I mentioned it in my earlier post that a number of Australian systems used them, as Zec also noted above: the South Australian Railways and Commonwealth Railways narrow gauge networks used it as standard as Zec stated above in excellent detail, as well as the Western Australian Government Railways from about 1893 - interestingly the then infant WAGR only adopted it after acquiring three NZR S class Single Fairlie locomotives and a selection of rollingstock second hand from New Zealand in the early 1890s under General Manager of Railways C.Y. O'connor who had migrated to WA from New Zealand (and who later left the WAGR and went onto much bigger things). An irony to this is a hundred years later the WAGR's modern sucessor Westrail sold their fleet of ADK/ADB and ADL/ADC class diesel hydraulic railcars to the NZR in 1993 for Auckland suburban service, which had chopper couplings too!

The Fairlies only lasted in WAGR service for a decade as the I class, but the chopper couplings were found to be much superior to the strange single buffer and link coupings the WAGR originally used, and it became their 'standard' coupling on Western Australia's narrow gauge lines for the next seventy or so years, with the not just the WAGR but the private Midland Railway Company of WA and the various timber railways of the state also adopting it too, thus allowing rolling stock to be easily interchanged between different systems. From the mid 1960s the WAGR finally introduced knuckle couplings to the narrow gauge network as part of the introduction of long, heavy, diesel-hauled block mineral trains (helped also by the Standardisation project featuring gauge convertable rolling stock as well).

From my understand chopper couplings were only ever used on narrow gauge lines strangely, and originated in Norway. I have no idea why they were never used on wider gauge, but the general larger sizes of standard and broad gauge rollingstock probably required drawgear with far greater strength and reliablity, something that engineers probably considered beyond the capabilities of chopper couplings.
 
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Posts #20 #21. Both posts are very much worthy of going into a Wiki. Excellent information and really great explanations of almost everything you might want to know about couplings.
 
US couples, 1830 link-and-pin first used, 1868 Janney coupler patented but by 1884 800,000 cars had link-and-pin. This was a mess as the pins came in all sizes and shapes. In 1884 a committee was set up to look at the 5,000 or so patented couplers and tested 42 of them, the Janney won but other makers could use the contour, this lead to each railroad needing to have parts for 80 some types. 1918 the M.C.B.A.(Master Car Builders' Association) came out with a standard Type D.
 
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