Invariably, when brass locomotives are discussed, sooner or later, the term “wheel wear” comes up. What does that mean exactly? I’ve never seen it discussed regarding any other kinds of locomotives, only brass. Can someone help me out with this one?
Thanks.
dlm
After having been run for a half-lifetime (and overloaded - driver spin) a couple of my oldest teakettles, with brass driver treads, are showing some barely-discernible wear. The worst is a tank loco that recently wore out the pickups on its insulated wheels. Total wear (on the order of .0015") is hardly earth-shattering. [EDIT] - The referenced locos are ‘brass,’ built from Japanese-manufactured kits.
I will not say that all wheel wear concerns are as trivial, but I will say that significant wheel wear would probably imply some pretty serious abuse - unless the model has been run on railheads the width (and consistency) of razor blades.
It is possible that some models were built with unusually soft brass alloy driver treads. I, personally, have never encountered them.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with locomotives bought new in 1964)
Many brass engines had cast brass wheels that were nickel plated. If the engine was run enough the plating would wear off revealing the brass underneath.
Dave H.
I would only expect to see visible wheel wear on a loco that had one or a combination of the following:
a. been required to pull loads that meant some spinning of the drivers. This is obvious on a steamer when it is happening, but not on a diesel;
b. requiring the loco to negotiate curves that are very close to, or at the limits of the design. If a loco can be made to run reliably through very tight curves that were well laid by the layout builder, there will necessarily be a fair bit of scrubbing on the tire surfaces if it is the practise day in and day out;
c. running the engine across poorly constructed gaps and frogs where the wheels have to dip and rise, even impacting severely the leading edges of the frog or gapped rail ends, and
d. manually sliding the engine from place to place along the rails, as one might do in a photography session when wanting a better position ( I confess to doing this myself at times, but I try hard to lift the engine so that 60-80% of its weight is suspended).
Dan–
It’s the nickel-silver plating on the treads of the wheels that wears off in time. Some of my brass locos have hardly ever shown wear, even after years of heavy use, others begin to show wear after only a couple of years. Seems to do with the quality of the plating process itself. As the plating wears down to the brass underneath, you’ll find yourself cleaning your loco wheels more and more because brass attracts oxide faster than nickel silver, and the resulting oxidation of course impacts performance quite a bit.
One of the things I do with all of my brass locos–and I’ve got a pretty large RUNNING fleet of them, is to install Tomar pickup sliders on both the locomotive and tender. This doesn’t prevent the nickel from wearing, of course, but it provides much better pickup for when the nickel eventually begins to wear. I find I don’t have to clean my locomotive wheels nearly as much using the sliders, and they’re hardly noticeable between the drivers. I bought a used Westside Rio Grande Challenger several years ago that had very worn plating on the drivers, and would barely crawl, even with the drivers cleaned. Installed the Tomars on both loco and tender, and the little devil took off like it was in the Kentucky Derby! I swear by them.
Tom [:D]
Wheel wear indicates the plating on the locomotive wheels has been worn off by excessive use.This is one of the things you look for when buying a use locomotive since this can happen on brass and plastic locomotive.
Personally I would think twice about buying a use locomotive with wheel wear.
T:
I don’t think it’s the oxide that does it. I know that this is a longstanding belief about brass rail and wheels. I think Linn Westcott promoted it pretty heavily. It might be the case when locos or track are stored dead for a long time, but when there’s any operation at all taking place, I suspect the real reason isn’t oxide. My brass rail doesn’t seem to collect any more dirt than my NS or steel rail, even when I’m not able to run very often (as has recently been the case [:(] )
I think the brass is softer and allows dirt to embed more easily, and is easier to damage.
Autobus–
You could be right about that–you’re certainly right about brass being softer and easier to damage. One thing I’ve learned over the years with my brass locos is NOT to clean the wheels with any kind of dry abrasive, no matter how fine the grit. I’ve had the best success with alcohol and a Q-tip, inverting the locomotive and turning it up full bore and cleaning the wheels that way. Between that and the Tomar sliders, I find that I don’t have to clean the wheels that often.
Oddly enough, I have some older Japanese brass imports with very little wheel wear, and some more recent Korean imports that wear rather quickly. As I said, I think it’s all in the quality of the plating process.
Tom [:)]
Many (45? years ago, I picked up a generic brass Pacific for a very cheap price. The boiler was poorly made, but it ran beautifully. I redid the boiler to resemble a Soo Line H-23, and ran it for many years. It had brass wheels, and did not have RP-25 flanges. By the end of the 1980s, the driver flanges had become so worn that you could have shaved with them, and it developed a distressing habit of picking the points of turnouts, and riding up on track joints. I was reluctantly forced to relegate it to the scrapper. I find that cheap brass wheels will wear much faster than good nickel-silver ones, and that plated wheels are almost as bad, depending, as previous posters have indicated, on the quality and depth of the plating.
That said, one brand of unplated brass freight and passenger car wheels, the old Central Valley, are darned near bullet-proof.