I recently took a trip to Seattle and back on the Empire Builder. As I was looking at the train, I noticed that the passenger cars have what appears to be two brake sets. There is the disc brake on the axle and a set of clasp style shoes on the inner side of the wheels. When the train was stopped at a station the clasp style brakes were always set. This caused me to speculate that they were like a parking brake. Anyone know the true story?
Also, I was surprised to see that the truck assembly was from Germany, at least on the sleeper that I was riding. Had always thought they were a U.S. product.
Gregory
P.S. The trip was great. Amtrak actually surprised me by running on time or even early on both the westbound and eastbound run.
On most newer passenger cars both disk and tread brake’s are used both work at same time.
Disk brakes alone are not easy to work with as wheel tread gets dirty/greasy and wheels get flatspots and or shell spots (small pieces of metal missing).
Tread brakes only is not solution either since the heat load is entirely put on outside of rim . making high speed operations a risk for wheels failing.
So these days both are used to spread heat load and keep wheels clean.
there is no parking brake on cars just a hand brake, a device that either by chain or sometimes with hydraulics forces the brakes on one side of a truck to remain applied, to hold the car when sitting in yards etc.
It seems like the disc brake type system is used on most newer equipment. I noticed that the transit system in Seattle, the Sounder trains, have the brake on the outside of the wheel. This was a new one for me as I don’t get to see commuter/passenger equipment too often.
I saw that for the first time, too (disc brakes on the outside) a couple of months ago when visiting the LA area–Metrolink cars have outside disc brakes. I’m sure they’re a bit noisier than they would be if the brakes were mounted inside, but it probably makes them a lot easier to maintain.
…That’s interesting…Disk’s on the “outside” of the wheel, anyone have some photos of such…
When the Cardinal used to ply through here…{it’s now a trail}, I did notice the disk brakes {on the passenger cars}, but they were located inside the wheel location…{inside the flange position}.
Here are photos of a Bombardier Sounder-style car on the Trinity Railway Express in Irving, TX. Several commuter lines use this type of double-level passenger car. I first saw them on the Virginia Railway Express (VRE) near Washington, DC, several years ago. VRE ridership was expanding faster than expected, so they were buying or leasing cars and locos from all over. The VRE cars still had their Sounder paint scheme. I immediately noticed the unusual location of the disk brake. Incidentally, only one axle on each truck has the disks.
As I recall the Empire Builder is one of Amtrak’s best performing (in on time performance) long distance trains and it may even be #1. Glad to hear you had a good trip.
Wow…I’ve never seen a R R passenger car brake like that before. Nice thick rotor and vented.
Boy, that sure looks capable of really putting the “clamps” on the speed…One thing that made me wonder as I looked at the picture {702}…If that train was running in territory that required a lot of braking, one can wonder how much heat might be transferred into the Timken bearing right inside of it.
I looked at one again today. The bearing is inboard of the wheel, so heat that does not dissipate through the vents on the rotor has to travel along the axle to the other side of the wheel before it reaches the bearing. Much of it will go into heating the wheel, too.
…Boy, I’d like to get a peek at one of them…Bearing inside of the wheel location…?? How do they replace it…The wheel would have to be removed. Wierd. Thanks for info.
Thanks for the photo! Since the original post, I haven’t had the chance to see another set of this type of brake. Looks pretty “beefy”, eh? I was trying to remember if each axle had one of these brakes. Seem to think that it was located on only one axle of the truck assembly. Would assume that there is one on each end of the axle to provide balanced braking.
