Western Railroad Discussion > So your wheels are "Round"

I was called for a train out of Hearne, Texas the other day.
Our first hot box / dragging detector went off. We stopped and inspected.
The second car on the B-end had a hand break quite tight.
Massive built up tread and big flats spots. Had to get a Carmen to use a
chisel and hammer to remove the built up tread.
Then go another 14 miles at a very slow speed in order to set it out.
The car was rocking from side to side.

AMK SDP40f
Spring,

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Hers the Right wheel.

AMK SDP40f
Spring,

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What would cause this?

John Gezelius
Tustin, CA

Send it to the Wheel Pit

Get the wheel truck out...
Thats the only way to get the car back on the road.

AMK SDP40f
Spring,

This is what those red brake shoes with the steel face cutter is supposed to take care off. Every time the air gets set the tread of the wheel gets machined.

Posted from Windows Phone OS 7

Sign it off, Let it Go, Send it to Omaha................LOL

john1082 Wrote:
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> What would cause this?


"The second car on the B-end had a hand break quite tight."

One drawback to not having cabooses anymore - nobody rolls trains out of the yard anymore. Where I work crews generally rely on the carmen to release brakes on trains but we regularly find handbrakes still applied 198 miles later at the next crew change point, although not with this much wheel damage because the brakes are almost always on heavily loaded cars of lumber.

Thump, thump, thump, thump ...........

What kind of car was this?

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

The infamous forgotten hand brake. For a time, the ZKCBR was arriving at Brooklyn Yard, OR atleast once a week with a hand brake on in the middle of the train. On many occasions, not only was the brake shoe gone, but the whole brake head on the type-24 brake beam.

When UP looked into it further, it was blamed on "unfamiliarity of intermodal equipment by road crews." being that intermodal cars generally have a hand brake on only one end, leaving several platforms on the other end without a locking brake. Sometimes it's a 9-15 car walk just release 3 hand brakes. The ZKCBR has several pickups of small-lane intermodal traffic, along with several setouts of Autoracks enroute. The train carries intermodal originating in places as far south as Houston, Texas, and north to Dupo, IL. Some traffic comes from the eastern roads as well. It has set-outs / pick-ups in North Platte, Cheyenne, Hinkle, and finally arriving Portland sometimes with less than 1,000 ft left of it. Lots of cutting away and tieing handbrakes.

Cheyenne and north Platte had the most work billed to their location, as the car with the forgotten hand brake(s) would routinely be the second or third car on a cut originating at those locations.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/12 22:12 by Western_Star.

Might be that having a person in the caboose catch this one would only work if there were less than five cars in the train. Didn't it say this occurred on the second car? I assume we still count from the head end.

This train was probably tied down properly somewhere, with the first three hand brakes applied. The second one just got missed.

Most freight cars are equipped with 'single wear wheels'!
Not meant to be turned, just change out the wheel set!!
Flat spots this bad definitely condemn these wheels,
potentially causing other dangerous internal defects like
fractures and smaller cracks!!
Mike

This is why i like to watch my train in curves. When in doubt if its smoke or dust ill stop and inspect. Saved many a wheel 20 cars deep that way.

Posted from Android

I saw a westbound train stopped at Holiday a few years ago with three cars in a row with similar wheels. They were all empty six axle CELX tanks. There were no hand brakes, the brakes had been set leaving the yard at kansas City, and apparently those three cars never released. A train stopped at Holliday heard the noise during a roll by inspection, but couldn't tell for sure what was wrong. We were stopped at West Holliday, so they pulled it by us slow. We saw what they had & radioed the info to them. They were able to back the train slowly back east and set the cars out on main 4.

BobP Wrote:
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> Thump, thump, thump, thump ...........

BANG, BANG, BANG.!!!!

alco539 Wrote:
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> BobP Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Thump, thump, thump, thump ...........
>
> BANG, BANG, BANG.!!!!

And if you do it for long enough you end up with broken rails too.

That slag builds up ahead of a sliding wheel, I've seen it build up in such huge blobs, that when they tried to go the other direction, the buildup wolud not clear the brake shoe and began sliding again.