I was wondering how do you grind out flat spots on wheels? Someone said you out something on the brakes so they get ground out that way. Or do you manually grind it?
You use a wheel truing lathe. On frt cars, you change out the wheel set and send it to a wheel shop.
On diesel locomotives,you turn them in place. RRs have special wheel truing machines in several spots around their system to do this work.
Depending on how bad the spots are…here at the Port, they have a cutter head that replaces the brake shoe.
Then they get a light reduction on the independent, and throttle up…and go up and down the lead in to the diesel shop…back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, till the wheel is cut down past the flat spot…only draw back to this is I have to switch and pull pins about 100 feet away, so all day long I get to listen to the squeal and screech of the cutter shaving the wheel, sorta like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Thing does a pretty good job though, it makes a neat little trail of curly steel shavings all over the place, they look like the shaving you get when you use a really sharp plane on a piece of wood…there is a fancy name for this head, but it looks like a combination of a sureform tool with a grinder wheel backing…
If its really bad, they swap out the wheel set, and send the whole kit and kaboodle out to a machine shoe to be trued up…
Ed
Ah. The sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. That’s a sound to make your hair stand up and your spine tingle. Have goose bumps just thinking about it. I HATE that sound!
i think they make brake shoes that will re-contore the wheel if the flat spot isnt to bad…
csx engineer
The biggest application for cutting shoes is the reduce high flanges and hollow worn tread. Small flat spots are also a good use for these devices especially if there are many small adjoining spots not exceeding 2 " each. Flat spots are a federal defect if they are more than 2 1/2 inches. For a slid flat wheel in excess of that you must also look for cracks , a wheel slid flat in excess of 4 inches may not be moved , the wheel must be either have the flat spot “feathered” and moved at 10 mph or changed out on the spot. If the wheel rim thickness is above 1 1/2 you may use a portable wheel lathe to reprofile the wheel. If cracks are found the wheel must be changed on the spot.
Randy
This is the worse one I ever saw. A TGV went a ways at 170 mph with one of the brake calipers siezed.
Yikes! One has to wonder whether the wheel was almost hot enough to weld itself to the rail when they stopped…
Seems like Trains had a mention of the brake-pad wheel cutter in a recent article. About a steamer IIRC.
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GOOD GRIEF !!! And they still got it up to 170?