BUFFER

In the far off days of my youth I'm sure there was a lot more to the design of the buffers that you used to see when visiting the local train station, large round pads on pneumatic dampers were the order of the day, looking at things now you'd think the train would come to rest after smashing through this and hitting the platform beyond. I could of course be all wrong and maybe 'proper' buffers were only ever in the Thomas the Tank Engine books.