What grade is best to use for cast iron brake shoes?

Slightly upgrade is best for braking. Level is best for the hand brake application.

Are you casting your own brake shoes?

Replacing cast iron brake shoes today is getting to be rather difficult and costly. You might want to consider the composite shoes as noted on the attached site. These folks have a comparison chart that makes evaluating the braking effort of a composite shoe to an iron one fairly easy.
Have made this transition in the past and it worked well.

http://www.rfpc.com/default.asp

Respectfully,
Dave Griner
www.wasatch-rr-contractors.com

yeah, we are looking into getting some shoes cast.
These are for oddball narrow gauge equipment. so they will have to be specialy made.
thanks

What shoes do you need. The SPCRR has paterns for 4 or 5 different brakes shoes, all used on California narrow gauge equipment. We may have something that will work for you.

Hi Randy,
We have paterns for some of the stuff we are needing right now. I don't have the list in front of me, Southern Pacific was one though. Don't know the size right off but I can check and PM you. I was wundering what to spec for material do you have a suggestion there?
Thanks

We use a good grade of gray iron. We are somewhat low tech, using hand brakes only (some cars have air, but lacking a locomotive with air we don't use it) Our railroad is flat, horse powered. (the latest Trains has a 2 page spread on the line) We do have two gas locos for maintenance and off season work, and bring in a visiting steam loco once a year or so...

We use a mix of old chilled iron wheels and recently cast surface hardened steel (For shoes we use a local family owned foundry, which is pretty low tech, for wheels we use a local machine shop that has done wheel work for UP, BART and SF Muni (Cable cars and historic street cars))

There is a need to match wheel and shoe hardness, (brake shoes softer than wheels) and match shoe hardness to service, but those concepts are not significant to our operation.

An approprate material for "home made" iron brake shoes would be ASTM A48 grade 30 gray cast iron with 1% to 4% chromium added to resist softing at elevated temperatures. A good target hardness would be Brinell 250 to 290.

Good info here. We have made two sets of patterns for our use on the street railway equipment at IRM, where it seems every car has different brake heads, wheel diameter, or profiles.

From what we have found, conventional wisdom directs you to choose a brake shoe hardness in the same range as wheel hardness. Softer shoes will wear quickly and have to be replaced often; harder shoes, will tend to grind up your wheels.

That said, it might begin to make sense to tend toward one level softer shoe with the difficultty of sourcing and replacing wheels, vs the old days when things such as freight car wheels could cheaply and relatively quickly be pressed on/off.

One little discussed option is the use of a steel backer plate inserted into the brake shoe casting, when it is poured. This acts like a rebar in concrete, prolonging the life as the shoe wears thinner, and as a safety feature, retaining the brake shoe pieces should a thin one crack while in use. Nothing like a half shoe falling out and derailing a lightweight car.

Wheel hardness varies widely depending on whether the wheels are cast iron, chill cast iron(hardened tread), or steel (with its many variations and compostions). Let us know how you are going to proceed.

Bob Kutella

Thanks,
That was the info I was after.
Jesse