SCRM has a couple broken leaf springs on our 1924 SOU dining car #3157. We use this car as our first class car and would like to keep it in service, but the broken springs make it unsafe to operate. We're having difficulty finding replacements. Anyone have any ideas or sources?

Check with your local truckers (as in over the road, diesel, Peterbuilt, ect..) They replace springs regularly. Talk to their spring shop, they should be able to fix you up.

By the way, the old, broken springs are a great source of metal for local back yard blacksmiths, including those who are able to make forged parts for railroad car restorations.

Try doing a Google. I believe we got some recently from the Standard Steel Spring Company in PA. There is also a similarly named company in the Minneapolis area, maybe the Original Standard Steel Spring Co. Or I have them swapped.

Our experience with trucker suppliers is that they generally do not stock the wide and thick material to make these railroad type springs. While they are willing to try, the cost for them was prohibitive due to a minimum order of material, and little opportunity for the truck spring fabricator to later use up the left over inventory.

Bob Kutella

Hopefully, you can find a supplier of heavy spring steel capable of forming the sizes and lengths you require. Replacing the broken leaves isn't too tough. You can clamp the shackle in the vise on the mill and gradually mill off the corners until the stack can be unpacked, the broken sections replaced. Then clamp the stack together in the shackle again, and weld the corners back in to secure the stack. Good luck.

dave

We've had really good luck with Benz Spring Company in Portland, OR. They've fabricated several custom leaf springs for us. Their website is:

http://www.benzspring.com/

We have used Dendoff Springs in Surrey (Vancouver), BC. They've made springs for several railway museums and mainline steam locomotives. Their web site is www.dendoff.com

We just had a new leaf spring made for a coach and they had the correct material in stock. We had one broken leaf but there was evidence of other deterioration so we replaced the entire (double) full elliptical assembly. They will quote in $US and there is no import duty (NAFTA). They also took care of our basic customs paperwork.

Richard Anderson
Executive Director
Northwest Railway Museum
www.trainmuseum.org

Matt -

Contact either George Walker or Bob Soule here at TVRM. We have sister diner 3158 and we may a replacement spring lying around in the weeds somewhere.

If you need a phone number, email me off line.

Landrum Spring in Atlanta, GA. They have made full sets of springs for locomotives both steam and Diesel locos. Good folks to work with.

I believe that the new leaf springs for PM 1225 came from Standard Steel Spring. I also dimly recall that that company is the merged descendent of the old Latrobe Spring Company and possibly Alco Spring Co.

Unbelievable as it sounds, we ordered 12 new 2-8-4 springs by stock number with one phone call, as if they were Ford parts from the NAPA store, and got quick, cheap delivery. You may be able to do the same for your heavyweight diner. Look on a railroad diagram-book page for the spring specifications, or on the old spring clamp itself for a four-digit number precended by an "E" for elliptic, "S" for semi-elliptic, or "H" for helical (coil). Evidently railroad-car springs were standardized for replacement at car shops.

This works for lightweight passenger cars, too. For emergencies, I still keep the CN spring book in my nightstand. Although I never did find a complete copy covering pre-VIA cars, it came in handy for such diverse cars as CMStP&P full-length domes and ex-NYC roomette cars that cycled through CN ownership.

One of the things we learned the hard way is that when one leaf breaks, it is a sign that the whole spring will croak very shortly, probably at an uneconomic time.

One more thing: In case you don't have a SR spring spec and read the spring number off a spring from one truck, remember that diners usually had different springs at either end, due to the weight of the kitchen. Ordering 8 identical springs might be a mistake.