i see this stenciled on freight cars… what is “wikit lube”?
In the days before roller bearings, it applied to Wikit Journal Lubricators (see for example Railway Age, 28 Jan 1959, pp. 1-4.) These are pads made to ‘wick’ the oil in a plain bearing box up to the underside of the journal.
Cousin of the family who owned Callaway Mills is Reeves Callaway of golf equipment and very, very fast Corvette fame.
“in the days before roller bearings…” sounds like many years ago… from a purely inexperienced viewpoint, it appeared to me the cars were newer (less than 20 years ago) , and likely had roller bearings… are you saying cars nowadays with roller bearings would have no need for the lubricant or the stenciled message i bring up?
Modern wheel bearings are sealed and grease-lubricated - here is a link to the 2012 AAR standards for that lubrication.
There is no need for special oil pads in journal lubrication when M-942 compliant grease is used with roller bearings. It is possible that the pads are still in use for some other area of the car being lubricated, but I don’t know of any that would benefit from the specific Wikit pad approach. It might be possible that a company is using the tradename for tribology products, although I haven’t heard of the name being used for that.
I was hoping someone with car maintenance experience was going to comment on this.
back in the 50s, i read books about rr-ing which said “cotton waste soaked in oil” was used to prevent “hotboxes”… is “wikit lube” an advancement over this?
Vast improvement.
Historically, of course, there was a wide range of products intended to reduce or “eliminate” hotboxes. I believe Angus Sinclair’s Railroad Gazette would periodically run articles on some of the ‘crankier’ ones. It’s been argued, in fact, that improvements through the 1960s might give plain-bearing trucks that have similar in-service reliability to early roller-bearing versions. But the advent of the sealed-package or AP roller bearing, with a nominal 500,000-mile life (on wheels that wear out in only a fraction of that) has really eliminated the likelihood of a resumption of plain bearings on interchange cars – and the additional manpower involved in a return to checking and maintaining plain journal boxes is almost inconceivable.
The point of the ‘normal’ lube system in a journal box is that the truck frame only bears on the axle over part of the machined ‘journal’ face (usually that encompassed by a bearing brass fitting neatly into the jaws of the sideframe end, and not retained by much more than gravity) and the bottom of the axle is exposed. To establish the appropriate hydrodynamic lube film across the whole contact volume between the journal and brass requires moving lubricant, against gravity, up to the point where the axle (rotating in either direction) first passes into contact with the brass, building up enough of a ‘wedge’ (under the lubricant’s surface tension) to provide a reservoir in case any bumps, shocks, or transient displacement opens up the gap between journal and brass and then slams the brass down again, which could cause short-term “compromise” of the lube film that actually carries the load.</
Well wwritten, RME. You stated the matter more fully than I could have, even though I have understood the matter for almost as long as I have known of it.
Who remembers the advertisements which stated that tapered roller bearings were better than plain cylinder bearings?
sp, i guess the answer to my question would be “no”?
The answer to the question you asked is "tell me when and where you see this on a modern car, and post the date and the car’s road and number here.
If there is some modern company using the “Wikit Lube” trademark or indication, that would give us a guide to tracking down what it is.