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Green Velvet and Chelesic Pin, Bearing & Journal Oils are blended with a specially selected tackifier that, among other things establishes "skins" on bearings and journals. These skins provide a surface modifier effect that lowers the coefficient of friction and a hydrophobic effect that repels water. The result is no rust and a good, tough lubricating film that works the instant the wheels turn. This characteristic is far better than grease and has been seen and reported numerous times since these lubricants were introduced about four years ago.

Since Kelly made mention of this old thread in a recent post, I thought I'd add some updates.

Last winter, we replaced all of the rod brass on 4960, using clearances of approximately 0.012", much smaller than the 0.030" we previously used when lubricating with hard grease. We constructed a set of oil lubricating cups based upon the design Strasburg uses, installed them, and used Green Velvet PB&J for lubrication.

In principle they worked great, as bearing temperatures were predominately only a few degrees above ambient. However, this design requires a 'testing phase' to get feed rates adjusted properly. You need enough capacity to make it to your next service stop, but enough flow to keep things lubricated. We also ran into occasional problems with plungers getting stuck closed, where little or no lubrication would get into the rod, or stuck open where the lube would run out prematurely. During testing, we never went enough miles to overheat any bearings, but we were uncomfortable running 65 miles in between service stops until we had all the 'bugs' worked out. Unfortunately, our time for testing was limited.

We removed the oil cups and replaced with buttonheads for soft grease. No other adjustments to the brasses was made. We use Alamagard 3752? soft grease, applied with a pneumatic grease gun. Temperatures run considerably higher than on the oil, but still well within the range of the grease. Actually pretty similar temps to when we used the hard pin grease.

Biggest drawback to the grease is the mess, which is mitigated somewhat by limiting the amount of grease applied at each service. Too much slings around and is difficult to clean off later.

Eric Hadder
Grand Canyon Railway Locomotive Manager

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