For all of You Train Lovers

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[YY1]

View attachment 1565040

This one and the one below are models.

Nice.

 

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[DeltaV]

 

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[Cranky]

Pretty much every train that you see is running on roller bearing axles. When I started on the railroad in 1978, more than half of the rolling stock still used friction bearings, a large babbit lined brass bearing riding on top of a polished axle journal. These were a chore to take apart when wheels needed changing, so roller bearings wheelsets were great because the wheels just dropped out when you lifted the trucks.

However, at one point someone got the idea to conserve some old equipment and so they decided to convert friction bearing trucks to accept roller bearings. That way they could re-use the two old truck sides. As you can see in this example, the lids have been removed, no longer being needed to keep the oil bath clean and dry.

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While this idea worked in practice, it was soon abandoned as the inconvenience of dismantling the whole assembly to change a wheel was still necessary, greatly adding to repair times as compared to the more modern roller bearing trucks.
Note the '6X11' cast into the center bolster, this shows what size axle the truck was designed for. Such a small bearing (6" diameter, 11" length) is seldom seen these days, with 6 1/2 X 12 being a lot more common.

The first time I saw that I thought someone messed up or the cap fell off and was running dry after who knows for how long and figured it wouldn't be long before it was going to burn up lol

 

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[Photon440]

I don't even remember where this was any more, some little town I drove through while driving around British Columbia in 2016.

 

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