Wagon Axlebox Longevity

[shipbadger]

11 hours ago, 2251 said:

I rather thought that grease axle boxes used tallow (readily available and cheap) or what was described as  "yellow grease" (which I think is merely a lower grade of tallow). Are you able to give a reference for the use of whale blubber/ whale oil?

I was told about the grease by somebody who had worked on the railways for many years, of course he could have been wrong.

[IWCR]

Re Routine maintenance.

No, removal of the axle box is not required unless it has been damaged.

The cover can be opened and the bearing and oil pad removed / replaced as need be, most routine work is just draining  out any water, check the bearing is not displaced, check the pad condition and top up the oil.

The box would only be removed if the wheelset was coming out or the journal needed attention, this would require a lift.  Also some have a seal at the back to keep dirt out and this may need replacing.

Occasionally a box may be damaged if the wagon has been derailed which can result in the axle box casting itself being broken.

 

Pete

[2251]

1 hour ago, shipbadger said:

I was told about the grease by somebody who had worked on the railways for many years, of course he could have been wrong.

 

Some further digging suggests that tallow and whale oil were part of some compositions, rather then being used on their own. This is said in the Third Series of Railway Practice (1848) in relation to French practice:

 

 

 

[Wickham Green too]

2 hours ago, IWCR said:

.... The box would only be removed if the wheelset was coming out ....... 

How often would a wheelset need new tyres - or replacement with another set fitted with new tyres ?

[shipbadger]

This is another of the 'it depends' answers.  There are gauges available to check on wheel, and importantly, flange wear.  Over the years different profiles have been used, but from a modelling perspective that is of no importance.  Interestingly the Examiners and Oilers Handbook referred to earlier is very keen on checking for bent axles!  There are also figures available for the minimum tyre depth.  From the number of wagons with spoked wheels at one end and three hole disc at the other wheel swaps at one end or perhaps using a mix of wheelsets occured.  Some railways, especially the Southern had a reputation for re-using anything that still had life left in it, including wheelsets from scrapped wagons.  In one case re-using ex-LSWR wheels with longer than standard axles resulted in a batch of wagons with the solebars being set slightly further apart.

[jim.snowdon]

It boils down to how far had it run, which translates into tread and flange wear. Wheelsets would be slated for turning if they had exceeded the limits for hollow wear of the tread, flange depth and flange angle. In the pre-modern era, wheels were a standard profile, agreed between the railways and the RCH, that eventually became what we now know as the BR P1 profile. Failing the go/no-go gauges for the tread and flange meant that the wheelset had to come out for turning, and would be replaced by whatever was available. Whether it was three-hole, split spoke or solid spoke mattered not so long as it was of the right capacity and had standard journal sizes and centres. These had been standardised by the RCH back at the beginning of the century, although as has been pointed out, there were older non-standard axles about quite late. All they did was to cause complication in the wagon repair shops.

 

Wheels with separate tyres, which includes all of the spoked variety, would be retyred and could last a very long time. Fatigue cracking is always a risk with railway axles, but was traditionally countered by conservative design. Ultrasonic testing didn't come along until quite late in railway terms, and axle failures were not common. The greatest risk was from surface defects caused by either corrosion or poor machining causing localised high stress concentrations. Three-hole wheels were more likely to be one-piece forgings, and when they reached minimum diameter would simply be scrapped. The axle could be fitted with new wheels, but only for a limited number of times otherwise the fit between it and the wheel would deteriorate too far to remain acceptable.

 

Jim

[Wickham Green too]

5 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

..... Whether it was three-hole, split spoke or solid spoke ..........

( further ) off topic I'm afraid - but few modellers seem to be aware that plain disc wheels were to be found beneath ( pre-disc-braked ) wagons : tiddly ones beneath various machinery wagons and standard thee-foot-ish ones under some railways' brake vans ................ and then there were oddball four-hole and six-hole discs ................................................

[jim.snowdon]

Although I am sure they were found other purposes, as far as I am aware the only purpose that the holes (whether three, four or more) served was to reduce the weight of the wheels. That said, it remains a puzzle that the 3' 7" wheels used on coaching stock, NPCS and locomotives only had two very small holes, presumably for lifting eyes to be attached.

 

Jim

[hmrspaul]

On 16/12/2020 at 08:04, shipbadger said:

Some railways, especially the Southern had a reputation for re-using anything that still had life left in it, 

... as did the young British Railways. There were numerous brand new wagons which emerged with split spoke wheels. And I believe that new building of split spoke had ceased perhaps 25 years before. And those wheels lasted well into the 1980s on some wagons. However this re-use does appear to have been restricted to wagons with a payload of 12 or 13 tons. 

 

Paul

[Wickham Green too]

On 16/12/2020 at 23:05, jim.snowdon said:

Although I am sure they were found other purposes, as far as I am aware the only purpose that the holes (whether three, four or more) served was to reduce the weight of the wheels.

Surely they were there so you could stick your sprag in* ........................... hence the lack of such holes under ( some ) brakevans as they're not generally loose shunted ( or can be controlled from within if they are ).

 

*A are we allowed to say such things before the 'watershed' ?

[JeremyC]

On 16/12/2020 at 20:26, Wickham Green too said:

( further ) off topic I'm afraid - but few modellers seem to be aware that plain disc wheels were to be found beneath ( pre-disc-braked ) wagons : tiddly ones beneath various machinery wagons and standard thee-foot-ish ones under some railways' brake vans ................ and then there were oddball four-hole and six-hole discs ................................................

5 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Surely they were there so you could stick your sprag in* ........................... hence the lack of such holes under ( some ) brakevans as they're not generally loose shunted ( or can be controlled from within if they are ).

 

*A are we allowed to say such things before the 'watershed' ?

It is worth noting that some owners (The Fife Coal Company is one example) fitted anti-spragging plates to their wagons, so wagons that look as if they are fitted with disc wheels may actually have spoked wheels. A giveaway is where the back of of a wheel is visible the spokes can be seen.

The Caledonian Railway Association forum had a thread about them.

https://www.crassoc.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=399

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by JeremyC
link added

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, JeremyC said:

It is worth noting that some owners (The Fife Coal Company is one example) fitted anti-spragging plates to their wagons, so wagons that look as if they are fitted with disc wheels may actually have spoked wheels. A giveaway is where the back of of a wheel is visible the spokes can be seen.

The Caledonian Railway Association forum had a thread about them.

https://www.crassoc.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=399

 

That is interesting because it leaves wide open how the RCH Rule requiring wagons to be spragged in certain situations, particularly on gradients,  could be implemented on those wagons?

 

Spraggs were very useful things because apart from their intended purpose they were a nady thing to havearound for re-railing wagons that had come off the road only one wheelset.  All you needed were a couple of spraggs and a few fishplates and you could quickly sort things.  there was a well known (as 'Spraggy') Yard Master and later Asst Area Manager at Reading in the 1960s/early '70s who abhorred calling out the breakdown vans and would do his own rerailing of any derailed wagons (provided they were upright) and he used spraggs and fishplates - far less likely to cause damage than those awfully heavy rerailing ramps you saw in some places.

 

Spraggs had gone from everyday use by the time I got involved in sorting out yard derailments in 1973 but you could do a lot if you had some bits of old sleeper and had cadged a few bits of steel plate from the local C&W works.  Provided you were careful it sometimes wasn't too difficult to pull a derailed wagon back onto the road if it was empty or not heavily loaded.

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

....... you could do a lot if you had some bits of old sleeper and had cadged a few bits of steel plate ......

Works for locos too ! .......

 

 

 

[Trog]

We used to just put Duff jacks under the axle boxes, jack the wagon up in the air and push it off the jacks in the direction of the rails. Repeat until successful.

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, Trog said:

We used to just put Duff jacks under the axle boxes, jack the wagon up in the air and push it off the jacks in the direction of the rails. Repeat until successful.

Surely you weren't a member of Bath Road breakdown gang?   That was one of their tricks but unfortunately they were not very good at it and it was advisable to stand a long way away when they were doing it using a bit of timber packing between the jack and the wagon as the splintering timber had the nasty habit of going a long way.

[Trog]

No P-Way through and through, perhaps we had more practise as we often had dog and catfish off the rails while unloading ballast on uneven new track.

 

Something else dodgy with Duff Jacks I once helped the Senior Relaying Supervisor do was straightening a crippled BH switch. He put a wooden BH key between the switch and stock rail at the cripple then we put two Duff Jacks back to back across the 4' just a bit closer to the toe. We then worked the jacks until the switch was bent just a little the other way. When we released the jacks which probably weighed something in the order of four stone each, the spring of the switch as it straightened threw them six feet into the air, quite exciting.

Edited December 22, 2020 by Trog
Correction