Greetings:
What companies are out there with experience in re-babbitting journal brasses or has any (5X9") in stock? We are about out of any that can be scraped in for another term of service... Thanks!
J.David

If there's an electric motor shop that services old DC motors in your area - and given the maritime industry thereabouts it is likely - they ought to be capable of relining the brasses with babbit. You can set up a flycutter to machine the required finish radius in a mill.

dave

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I wonder if the preservation community as a whole is missing an opportunity. We are trying to scrap two cars that are off site and never in the plan to save them. We have been informed of easily 20 more cars in the general midwest area that have been 'found' and presumably should be 'saved'. But clearly many will go to scrap.

For the two cars I mentioned we intend to recover the brass and wedges.

But what about the cars not saved, or worse yet de-accessed by other legitimate museums? What happens to those?

At some point we should consider a pool of such parts, similar to what function ARM tries to do with electric cars. Museums that operate their equipment will have a continuing need to maintain such parts.

Bob Kutella

The Naval Weapons Station and railroad at Earle, N.J. has about 250 box cars with asbestos insulation and friction bearings that they are trying to get rid of.
Many are 5-1/2 x 10, probably some 6 x 11.

BTW, we're looking for some extra 6 x 11 brasses. See our request in the Classifieds. Contact Kelly or myself by PM or at 717-687-8421 if you have any laying around.

Bob, I have several of thoughts on this... One more rhetorical

1) When will we stop feeding on scrap? In the past our preservation efforts survived on salvaged parts... if you had a bad wheel set on your boxcar, no problem, just go down to your local railroad scrapper and buy or beg a decent replacement set... Unfortunately the cars they are scrapping these days have roller bearings and are the wrong size... Collectively we need to change our operating model.

I see a two part solution:

a) On the used parts front: A data base of what people have to trade. We need to be collectively proactive about saving parts from larger fleets like the navy cars mentioned in this thread. Some years ago SP scrapped their older "GS" drop bottom beet gons... Lots of us discussed purchasing cars for their trucks, draft gear and brakes. Not many were saved. Clearly the idea of 10 deteriorating freight cars out back as a parts bank goes against our model of taking only what you can restore and preserve, but what a great parts source for some of the 40' freight cars which we from time to time save. In the auto parts industry there is a "for profit" model with salvage yards set up to dismantle autos, then warehouse the parts which have likely resale value... We collectively can't support this model, but may need to try.

b) Lots of us have found it necessary to make new parts for old cars or locomotives. A few like Strasburg have some new parts for sale. There are still some railroad supply companies which make parts of value for us. We need to work on some sort of directory of sources. It might be a good project for RYPN. Of course, new parts at new part prices violates our collective basic bottom feeding cheap part ethic.

I was even wondering if we might somehow take this a step farther, in the case of bearings, needing only to be re-babbited.

When a bearing goes bad you need one now, but are unlikely to need a second one in short order.

If we had a pool of participants around the country having one or several in their backup parts storage, why could not one be loaned out, and then the user get theirs repoured and returned to the supply museum?

A lot of trust would have to be involved, but I am always an optimist.

Bob Kutella

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Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:22 am Post subject: Re: Journal Brasses-Reclaimed

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Collectively we need to change our operating model.

I see a two part solution:

a) On the used parts front: A data base of what people have to trade. We need to be collectively proactive about saving parts from larger fleets like the navy cars mentioned in this thread. Some years ago SP scrapped their older "GS" drop bottom beet gons... Lots of us discussed purchasing cars for their trucks, draft gear and brakes. Not many were saved. Clearly the idea of 10 deteriorating freight cars out back as a parts bank goes against our model of taking only what you can restore and preserve, but what a great parts source for some of the 40' freight cars which we from time to time save. In the auto parts industry there is a "for profit" model with salvage yards set up to dismantle autos, then warehouse the parts which have likely resale value... We collectively can't support this model, but may need to try.

b) Lots of us have found it necessary to make new parts for old cars or locomotives. A few like Strasburg have some new parts for sale. There are still some railroad supply companies which make parts of value for us. We need to work on some sort of directory of sources. It might be a good project for RYPN. Of course, new parts at new part prices violates our collective basic bottom feeding cheap part ethic.

Randy, your idea is the same thing I've been hoping to turn the classifieds into. I've offered to try and start doing just such things but there appears to be no real interest in doing it though. I was hoping to turn into a kinda "pocket list" of sorts for the preservation field.

jack,

On the Association of Railway Museums web site there is something called the parts site.

i believe it is mostly street car parts.

But there is no reason that it could not include main line items.

I think storage of high value like brasses would be a problem that would need to be solved.

Ted Miles

Since the journal rides on the babbit lining, why not make the "brasses" of cheaper cast iron? Not as attractive to steal.

dave

Not sure, so this is a question to the experts, does the softness of the brass act as a hard shock absorber? Most of the ones I have seen look to be a high copper brass (redder) than the high zinc (light gold) brass trim and decoration items that you come across now.

Rich C

Hi,

The MUNI Ry (San Francisco) still operates cars that use babbit lined journel bearing. Some are steel shells with the babbit poured and turned to size. The nice thing if you have a journel bearing made from journel brass, is that you can still operate the car on the journel brass when you've worn through the babbit. Steel on steel just heats up quickly.

The babbit also wears in fast and to size. We have the bearings turned to a few different sizes, and these are popped in and off we go. Also, the operating speeds are generally less than 20 MPH.

Karl Johnson

It's a fair question from an engineering standpoint. However, the AAR standards are what they are with regard to plain bearings, and that is not going to change. In our legal environment it is almost impossible to deviate from a given standard without a lot of heavy breathing from insurers and other watchdogs.

In the event of equipment failure or personal injury resulting from equipment failure, departing from the standard is usually considered grounds for negligence. So, for the foreseable future, unless the ESC took it up and made revisions, fabricate and re-babbitt your bearings to the AAR standard(s).