I found this EBT wheelset at Cool Springs Park in WV in 2015. I think EBT may have cast their own wheels.

-Philip Marshall

Our museum has a number of commercially manufactured wheels, some of which have the customer's name (railroad, or freight car manufacturer) cast into them. In fact, there is a lot of interesting information cast into them (Manufacturer, city of manufacture, date of manufacture, weight of wheel, customer name, and one even has warranty information, I think). So, railroad name might not necessarily mean home-made.

JR

Philip-
Do you have other photos of the EBT wheel with more markings/context? It does appear that there is another mark on the wheel peeking out of the shadow to the left. It appears to be in a Vulcan truck, so post 1913ish and likely not made by EBT. Probably just an ownership mark.

While EBT had a very capable shop and produced some parts regularly, they purchased parts from outside vendors right from the start as needed. Readily identifiable EBT car wheel photos I have show wheels from AC&F and Lobdell Car Works, and we know Billmeyer & Small supplied their own stuff for the early wood cars. Cost and time were likely the guiding factors in deciding whether to purchase or make in-house. Wheels and axles are a critical specialty item and there were so many manufacturers in competition back then that I doubt EBT would have cast their own car wheels (although I could use another trip through the pattern room) or forged their own axles. The large hammer in the foundry is barely large enough to efficiently forge a new 1880s-era car axle from scratch. They could have purchased raw forged axle billets and shape-turned them in-house, but I doubt it. The one exception to casting their own wheels may have been during the mid-1870s when they were having reliability problems with the inadequate B&S 20" wheels and needed something stronger. They may have experimented on their own a little, but it was around the time EBT started their 24" wheel program (1878) that B&S changed their 24" wheel from a 5-ribbed back to a 6-ribbed back.


Back to the OP -
Axles were commonly supplied by vendors to individual RR spec with wheel seats left slightly oversized and wheels with bores slightly undersized so that the RR shop could finish the seat and bore for the proper press/interference fit. Many car manufacturers also purchased hardware like finished wheelsets from outside vendors even if they were designing and building their own trucks.

Kelly's post is good, but it should be noted that locomotive stuff is not as generic as car parts. Steam locomotive wheelsets, particularly drivers, are a much more detailed and specialized engineering field.

Car wheelsets followed a more 'generic' approach and could/can easily be supplied by third-party vendors under a much simpler standardized formula. It also has to be noted that the standards didn't exist early on - until/beginning around the 1870s/80s - and before that every road and Master Mechanic had their own ideas, creating chaos in car shops that repaired interchange cars. That lead to the establishment of standards that would eventually become more or less mandatory.

I recall reading that the reason for hollow boring driving axles was to simplify heat treatment on very large axles, i.e. having a 12" axle with a 3" hole in it, making it a tube with 4-1/2" thick walls, is a lot easier to anneal than a 12" diameter solid bar, with the heat being able to soak through that 4-1/2" thickness from inside and out.

Older, smaller locomotives with hollow bored axles were commonly recipients of 2nd hand axles removed from service on larger engines. As I recall, 1906 era UP #618 has hollow bored axles throughout, and Sierra RR #36 has a hollow bored main axle.

There were hollow axles used on passenger cars, freight cars and on transit vehicles. The center of the axle carries no bending load, so it was thought that there was no reason not to use hollow axles. Many start as DOM tubing, some coming from Timken. There were several accidents blamed on hollow axles. The drawing process can produce laps on the inside wall of the tube that can act as stress raisers. It is nearly impossible to inspect the inside walls, so most hollow axles are gone. Where weight is an issue and hollow axles are still in use, they are now gun drilled.

I once saw a freight car from Mexico with hollow axles. The car was in the shop and was getting a routine UT inspection of the axle. The axle appeared to be a solid axle, but failed the UT inspection. It turned out that someone had welded plugs into the end of the axle to make it look like a solid axle. This occurred about 1975.

Hollow axles can be inspected. Turbine and generator shafts are hollow. At major inspections the end plug is removed, the bore honed and it can be inspected by ultrasound, penetrant, or magnetic particle. Then replugged until the next time. It's easier as these are usually 4-5 1/2 inch bores.

Yes, it was from this pair of Vulcan trucks. I stand corrected.

-Philip Marshall

Wandering around out behind the EBT shops, before the new Foundation folks started to clean up the area, I noticed a pile of axles for hopper cars that included a couple of un-machined billets. So I think they may have made their own axles, at least some of the time. I looked at the piles of 24" wheels, but I don't recall what initials or names were cast on the reverse. Sorry.

Add to that list the Scullin Disc, perhaps the most distinctive with their Art Deco arrangement of circular holes. Have any of these been saved, or are they truly extinct?

Photos of all four can be viewed here: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/types/drivers/

The 1522 is notable for having a Scullin Disc for the main driver and sister 1519 similarly has a set-so they are not extinct. They may be other extant examples but I cannot remember any others off the top of my head.

1522 as preserved has an interesting pair of Scullin mains; if I remember correctly they have two different casting years. It's worth a trip to MOT to examine them up close and see how they were cast...

Incidentally, T&P 610 has a lovely pair of Baldwin Disc mains hiding in there; most people haven't looked closely enough to see. The 'beauty treatment' rebalancing these locomotives is an ASME historic site all by itself...

The railroad in Guatemala made it's own wheels, axles, and most anything else that they needed for the rolling stock fleet, but not the locomotives. Recycling worn out parts in their foundry was an economy measure, employeed increasingly as time went on to avoid ordering new wheelsets, etc from the USA. They also had an axle lathe, similar to a twin tool post wheel lathe. I don't know when this practice began, but at the end of government operations in 1997, they were so desperate that they used dirty crankcase oil from the diesel locomotives instead of Journaltex. It's ironic that this economy measure forced them to buy heavy refined oil whenever they wanted to use the steam engines.

Side Note / Thread Shift:

There exists a Lima Shay currently running on EMD axles.

Three guesses.........

Along with a number of UP tenders.

Don't remember where I saw it, but I do remember reading about drilled shafts (axles) being more resistant to bending and twisting, than a solid shaft of the same diameter.