Locomotive 93 has Franklin self-adjusting wedges. Does anyone have information on adjusting the self-adjusting wedges.

N&W 611 has self-adjusting wedges also. I believe Scott Lindsay of Steam Operations is familiar with them since he was on the Norfolk Southern steam crew. Visit his website at:

http://www.steamoperations.com/index.htm

We have the same boxes on the Milw 261. The adjuster has roughly 7/8'' of adjustment movement. When topping out (The spring being fully extended so that the top plate of the adjuster is up against the pedestal binder) the adjusting follower is flush with the bottom of the outer casing of the spring pocket. Using a square end wrench you turn the follower counterclockwise until it sticks out of the pocket 1/2" this gives it roughly 3/8" to move up or down. Be sure when you make the first adjustment that the wedge is up as far as it can go. you can use a 2' pry bar to accomplish this. Sometimes when the wedge is cold and dry it can be loose in the pedestal and the spring will not push it up until you're rockin' and rollin' down the track and the lub is flowing so that the wedge can move easier. If during your inspections you see that the follower is sticking out more than 7/8" check to see if the inner spring is broken.

There is a comprehensive explanation of these adjusters on p. 70 of Publication #8401 "Steam Locomotive Maintenance" which was published by the Tourist Railway Association Incorporated (TRAIN) back in 1984.

Ed Selinsky

GCRY #29 has them as well.

Mark,

Please check your company email address listed on the web site. I sent you a scan from a book covering Franklin automatic adjusting wedges. If you do not recieve the message let me know and I will find a way to get it to you when I get home from work. I hope it helps.

John Bohon

Can a locomotive easily be retrofitted with Franklin self-adjusting wedges? Is it a "drop-in" retrofit for the solid wedge, with minor work on the pedestal binder? Or does the driving box and/or predestal opening require modification as well?

Thanks! - Doug Debs

I think they must be pretty easy to retrofit. The question is, how hard would it be to reproduce a set of them?

L. D. Porta was a BIG proponent of them and so is David Wardale. Wardale specifically advocates the use of Franklin's final arrangement, which used manually adjustable wedges behind the axle boxes and self-adjusting wedges in front. I imagine it'd be quite an effort to retrofit this setup.

Doug,

No modification to the pedestal or box is required. I see no reason you can not make rather simple modifications to your existing binder and wedge for the retrofit. Send me an email address and I will send you the same information I sent Mark. Drawings are included. My email address is jhbohon@yahoo.com

John Bohon

It's getting late and I'm getting sleepy, so I'm having a problem understanding a manually adjustable wedge in back of the box and a self adjusting wedge in front of it. The fixed shoe should be in front as that's where all the important dimensions come from in tramming and axle locations in the frame.
Like I said, I probably misunderstood the posting.

Saves you having to continually shim behind the front shoe as you take up the wear in the rear wedge (theoretically) if you are actually doing so on a regular basis. Both shoe and wedge interfaces wear in service. Kind of like trying to equalize the central position of the axle by shoving towards it from both ends, not just forward from the rear.

dave

I have a related question: I've got a few sheets (poor copies) of the plans for that Atlantic Coast Line R-1 4-8-4's built by Baldwin in 1938. These engines apparently have no wedges front or rear.

How did they keep the axleboxes reasonably tight? Shims?

I'm thinking this was somebody's brainstorm that didn't work out too well. Were there any other engines in this time period with no wedges?

To answer Hughs question; the C&O did not use wedges either, double shoes, machined to size. The shoes were steel with bronze wear liners, when clearances were to great new liners were installed and the assembly machined to thickness. The N&W 1218 had a variation of that design. There wedges were used, but travel was limited but stops welded to the pedestal at the top of the wedge. Wedges could not be adjusted, once the stops were welded in place, (other than removal and rewelding).

As one may imagine, installing drivers without wedges (for that extra alignment clearance) is a ..., lets use the word, challange!

Robert Yuill
www.historicmachineryservices.com

Robert- Thanks for that info.

What I gather from reading David Wardale is that spring-loaded wedges should be mandatory on any modern steamer. Not just to reduce the requirements for manual adjustment, but to ensure proper running clearance around the boxes at all operating temperatures. The locomotive's frame and the boxes themselves significantly expand with heat (and components near the firebox expand more than components farther away) so that they're apt to be too loose when cold or too tight when hot with manual wedges (or no wedges).