Eastern Railroad Discussion > Something you dont see every day.

Last Thursday while out rail fanning near Churchville NY I saw CSX train Q163 pass by. A few minutes later I heard the hot box detector at MP 386.5 located in Churchville NY indicate that there was a hot bearing on the 226th axle, north side. Since I was only a couple of miles away I decided to take a look. I figured they would probably stop out in Bergen NY, maybe right next to a parallel road and the did. The conductor checked his train and called the NG dispatcher and informed him that the bearing was hot and smoking. It was decided to have the Rochester car department come out and take a look. After the car department arrived and inspected the car it was thought that the train could move at no more than ten mph up to Batavia NY where the car could be placed on a siding and repaired there. As they started to move west they decided that it would not be OK to continue and stopped the train. At that time it was decided that they needed to bring in a heavy crane and make the repair right on the mainline. A call was placed to Winters Rigging, located in North Collins NY, to do the job. It took about two hours for Winters to arrive and when they did they hooked up to the car and prepared to make the lift. This is a busy mainline and since they had several trains to run they decided to wait until traffic slowed down a little. They waited about three hours for traffic to quiet down and in that time eleven trains passed by. Once the eleventh train had cleared they had a window to make the repair. They lifted the end of the car, rolled out the bad axle/wheel set, rolled in the new set and lowered the car back on the rails, all in about 7 minutes. Certainly something you don't see done on the mainline every day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/14 09:44 by biff.

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Cool and interesting video and thanks for sharing!

John Miller
Conestoga, PA

Questions: Was the truck chained to the well car so it would be lifted up with the car? Did the brake assemblies for that wheelset have to be moved out of the way, adjusted, or removed to let the wheelset stay on the rails?

Thanks.

Jimmie Fisher
Oriental, NC
Flickr

had to be a frozen bearing with the wheel not being able to turn at all

Posted from Android

Jimmie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Questions: Was the truck chained to the well car so it would be lifted up with the car?

yes

> Did the brake assemblies for that wheelset have to be moved out of the way, adjusted, or removed to let the wheelset stay on the rails?
>
> Thanks.

all that is connected to the truck assembly ... the axle just slides right into the slot of the truck



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/14 07:46 by Out_Of_Service.

When they originally checked it out they tried rolling the train a few feet and the wheel did turn. Thats why they they originally thought they could take the car to Batavia. I can only speculate that it then froze up necessitating the stopping of the train and making the repair where they did.

Out_Of_Service Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> had to be a frozen bearing with the wheel not
> being able to turn at all
>
> Posted from Android
>
> Jimmie Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Questions: Was the truck chained to the well
> car so it would be lifted up with the car?
>
> yes
>
> > Did the brake assemblies for that wheelset have
> to be moved out of the way, adjusted, or removed
> to let the wheelset stay on the rails?
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> all that is connected to the truck assembly ...
> the axle just slides right into the slot of the
> truck

Posted from iPhone

Interesting video!!! Thanks for sharing.

I saw NS do that to a conventional TOFC car on the Southern Tier Line only they had to lift the car with hydraulic jacks they didn't have the luxury of a crane. It took considerably longer to change out than 7 Min's!!!

They were lucky it was at the end of the car and not one of the
articulated points which would have been much more difficult to
fix. Very interesting video, thanks for posting.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

Rigging looked pretty easy. I've never seen a car lifted by its drawbar. Also, its interesting to see how much vertical motion an articulated joint can take.

Thanks for the vid.