Back in 1911 the Griffin Wheel Co. patented and soon commenced making a double-plate iron railroad wheel they called the F.C.S. There is a wealth of information here: http://utahrails.net/industries/griffin-wheel.php. But, nowhere do I find an explanation of what the "F.C.S." stood for. Anyone know?

I don't think the "C.S." stands for cast steel; the wheel seems to have been cast iron, not steel.

I thought it stood for "Ferromanganese, Chromium, Silicon" those being the key alloying agents that F.K. Vial cited as important in making quality chilled-tread iron wheels at the time. It is interesting to look at what the actual Vial and Griffin patents around 1911 claim.

Much later, Griffin developed the EQS steel wheel, which supposedly meant "Electric Quality Steel". This is actually a back-formation; the name was derived using the chief engineer's initials. (Edward Q. Sylvester).

My hat is off to you! I sincerely doubt it gets any better than that.

DJS

I was always under the impression that Griffin was known for its Chilled Steel wheels, so perhaps it is Forged Chilled Steel?

There's not really such a thing as a 'chilled steel wheel'.

The F.C.S. wheel is a special form of chilled-TREAD iron wheel. The effect of the rapid chilling (via a metal ring in the mold) is to make the tread of the wheel largely iron carbide, a very hard material, while the center of the wheel cools more slowly and therefore is less brittle.

Griffin didn't get into steel wheels (on a mass manufacturing basis) until decades later.

DJSullivan wrote on January 2, 2017: "Back in 1911 the Griffin Wheel Co. patented and soon commenced making a double-plate iron railroad wheel they called the F.C.S. There is a wealth of information here: http://utahrails.net/industries/griffin-wheel.php. But, nowhere do I find an explanation of what the "F.C.S." stood for. Anyone know?"

One of my goals with UtahRails.net is to document the various industries served by railroads here in Utah. For many years I had known of the former Griffin Wheel facility in Salt Lake City but knew little about it. Back a couple years ago a friend asked me about the history. Good question. An internet search found some bits, including a book published in 1977 about the 100 years of history of the company.

Several online searches for the book on used book sites did not turn anything up, so I decided to try an interlibrary loan from my local county library. Such action has helped previously with obscure titles, and it did not fail this time. It took some time, but five weeks later I had the 50-page book in my hands. I took it home and scanned it at 600dpi, and returned to the library. The web page is the result, with a compiled version of just the text from the book. Sad to say, the book was printed on textured paper, and the photo quality was terrible. I used photo editing software to fiddle with and rescue the photo of the Salt Lake City site, but removed all of the other photos from the scanned pages.

I'm glad that someone found some use for my efforts. I have added the above information about F.C.S. and E.Q.S. wheels.

http://utahrails.net/industries/griffin-wheel.php

Don Strack
http://utahrails.net/