On the last Weekend Photo Fun thread Penncentral99 shows some pretty good techniques for painting wheels and trucks. However, his example is of a newer truck where there was minimal leakage of grease from the bearings. I am modelling the late 1950s, and I know that earlier wheel bearings did leak and therefore the colours of the wheels and the bearings would be affected by the grease.
My question is: when were the bearings that didn’t leak introduced? In other words, in the late 50s, would there have been some clean bearings (i.e. showing rust only on the bearing and the wheel) or did they come along later?
The one’s I saw growing up in the 50’s up close and lift the journal box lid, did not have bearings, like I said…journal box lid. Friction bearing trucks, You could look inside and not see grease but thick 90 weight oil mixed in with what looked like, all different colored thread like spaghetti, to keep it from sloshing around was one reason. I don’t ever recall seeing any truck with grease all over it from leaking…dirty grimey yes, a little rusty in parts, the whole truck being covered with something like a tar, cresote paint, very sticky to the touch. I think a lot of guy’s, over-do the weathering on trucks…but that is just my opinion. I know traveling to different parts of the country play a big role in what they look like. I lived less than1/4 mile from a very large industrial switching yard and spent a lot of time with my friends playing around on boxcars and tank cars, that was about all that was in the 12 track yard. You just had to watch out for the railroad dogs, all six of them. Most of the time, they switched at nite, so not much going on during the day. Memories!!!
There was a discussion on this on the forums July 2012, You were part of it.
Thanks for the link. Like I said, my memory is the pits.
Given that information, I am still a bit confused about the issue of grease/oil stains on the bearing housings and the wheels. In simple terms, would friction bearing trucks have evidence of leaking oil on the bearing housings or the wheels. I seem to recall a discussion recently which suggested that friction bearings would turn the wheels dark from leakage. Is this wrong?
To boil it down, what colour do you use for your wheels/trucks/bearings? (Guess I could have simply asked that question to start with.[D)])
Gidday Dave, Having just had a quick browse through previous threads, I’m probably just as confused as you, though I’d suggest that the trucks and wheels would be covered more with dust and grime rather than excessive or leaking lubricant.
This photo while a black and white does shows a darker area around the axle of the wheel hub, of what I consider is dust that has collected on the film of oil that has escaped past the rear axle box seal. http://www.shorpy.com/node/16980?size=_original#caption
Just a little input from my observations about solid bearings…
Car knockers of the day carried a long spouted oil can which held about five or six gallons of journal box oil which, as Frank points out, was like 90 weight oil but was compounded to make a thin film between the babbitt bearing surface and the axle journal. And they held a hook/poker that they could use to pull the lid open and poke the stuffing around to make sure it wasn’t pinched between the bearing and the journal.
The cotton waste gave way to pads that looked like big mop heads that had foam rubber and loops of cotton that would wick the oil onto the journal. Sometimes the cotton waste would get pinched between the brass and the journal and that would cause a hotbox. These pads were supposed to prevent that.
In some hump yards the car knocker would open the journal box cover and as the car approached the hump an automatic oiler would squirt a dose of bearing oil into the box.
Oil was cheap and the car man would be pretty generous with the oil and here is where the oil would run out the back of the journal box. There was only a felt seal back there and it wasn’t too effective at keeping the oil in. Imagine the oil in a journal box where the car went into a rotary dumper! Journal box lids had rubber gaskets but they didn’t always fit well and the oil would splash out.
So the wheel face would get splattered with oil. Remember those spinning paint works of art you could make at the county fair? That’s what the wheel would look like when the felt seal was bad or if the car knocker overfilled the journal. It would be wet, sticky, tarry. It would get on the brake shoes and make them stink on a long downward grade.
The main thing about weathering is that the car would pick up whatever dust was locally prevalent, including sand from the locomotives (think of the B&O’s Sandpatch Hill) in the area that it was running in, I.E. red Georgia clay, and cook onto the wheel surface until
The trucks of the pre roller bearing type are identifiable by the square lid on the end. This opened up to reveal a box about 8x8x8, into which cotton waste (from the cotton mills) that was dipped in thick oil was placed. The cotton waste was also used for wiping down locos, etc.
If the oily waste got low or dry, a fire caused by friction could follow. This was called a “hotbox”, and was one of the main things train observers looked for in their passing.
The roller bearing trucks came out in bulk in the mid '50s and of course had no need for routine lubrication.
We are talking friction bearing trucks vs roller bearing trucks. Friction bearings were universal up to the 1940’s, and stayed in service thru the 1960’s. The friction bearing trucks had journal boxes with flip up lids thru which the oil could be topped off. The friction bearing was a just a sizable piece of brass or bronze or something anti-friction, which tranferred the weight of the car to the top of the axle. This rig had to be kept oiled, otherwise you got a hotbox, a fire in the journal, which in extreme cases could melt off the end of the axle. Since the axle end was kept oily, the oil would migrate out of the journal box and spread over the face of the wheel. There, it picked up dirt and formed a black coating on the wheel face. I use grimy black or oily black paint to simulate the look.
Roller bearings got big enough and strong enough for railroad service in the late 1930’s. The bennies of roller bearings were very low friction and no oiling, the bearing was lubricated for live at the factory. Live being like 20 years. There was a late 1930’s publicity photo showing a few young girls pushing a huge roller bearing steam locomotive by hand.
By the 1960’s new rolling stock came thru with roller bearings, easily indentified by the visibly rotating axle ends in place of the flip up lid journal boxes. Some years later, (80’s?) it was decreed that all rolling stock used in interchange will have roller bearings. Wheels on roller bearing trucks stayed free of oil, and so they just picked up dust and mud and showed a dry looking mud color. My era is before roller bearings so I haven’t faced up to finding a good mud colored paint. Around here you see a light brown-grey color. Down in Georgia I would expect to see more red clay color.
Note that many early roller bearing trucks, especially those for passenger and express cars, as well as steam locomotive leading/trailing trucks and tenders, did require lubrication and also had journal box lids (usually round in shape). Some of these had openings for oil to be added through the lids without having to lift them.
