U.S. Sugar / F.E.C. #148 restoration progress

Dennis Storzek · **Posted:** Fri Feb 09, 2018 5:39 pm

The bearings being inside the wheels is actually no biggy; if you were running a fleet of hundreds of these locomotives, you'd just lay in a stock of replacement wheelsets, the same as the railroads do now-a-days for freight cars. When a bearing commits suicide, they just throw the whole wheelset away. But Kelly's point is well taken; if you have a unique wheelset that no one can replace on the road, maybe bearings that can be doctored make more sense.

TrainDetainer · **Joined:** Wed Nov 23, 2016 7:05 pm **Posts:** 283

Quote:

For my locomotive, I would never convert them to rollers in that in my opinion plain bearings are superior to roller bearings in that the truck will be more flexible with plain bearings

Kelly -

I have to agree that a solid split box like you did for these two instances has to be far more rigid than a plain bearing under a wedge - Any thought to hogging out the box and putting a radius in the pedestal grooves so that the boxes can function more like a standard narrow RB adapter? Something like the white areas here -

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Or is there some extra slop that we can't see built in? The r6 tolerance for 140-200mm locomotive bearings (looks like about a 6" axle to me) in Timken's design pages doesn't leave a whole lot of slop, but there is a little. I realize there isn't much room in a lot of engine/pony truck boxes for full conversions, but in the case of 148 there looks to be enough room to put a standard adapter that would give almost the same flexibility as a car truck.

The other thing that makes my curiosity meter bounce around is the heat dissipating ability of a solid block surrounding the entire bearing. Timken's bearing paper work includes the general statement that every 10 degree C increase in temp shortens lube life by half, but they don't go very far into heat removal and say nothing in what I saw about AP/AP-2 assemblies as a whole. From the relatively few RB hot boxes I've encountered, radiant air cooling seems to be a fairly important factor. Any thoughts?

That said, those are great looking spoked centers and always nice to see Strasburg's work. I take it the pedestals are new fab to accommodate the new boxes too?

Dick_Morris · **Posted:** Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:18 pm

Kelly - Thanks for the additional information and for giving your take on whether the conversion was advisable.

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

Russ Fischer · **Posted:** Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:55 am

Kelly Anderson wrote:

My point about flexibility has to do with the ability of a plain bearing wheel set to be free to slide from side to side within its lateral limits (5/16" new for our #90) as easily as it rotates. These boxes are as free in the pedestals as the originals, and the bearings have some lateral slop built in before they reach their shoulder in the boxes (1/8", the same as the slop to a bearing adaptor), but it is a dry, steel on steel fit, not nearly as free to adjust itself to moment to moment adaptations as the engine goes down the track.

This means that the normal free float built into the engine truck is not there and the centering device must deal with all lateral movement. This may not be a bad thing from a stable tracking standpoint but will result in some (perhaps slight) additional wear on the wheel flanges and centering mechanism. Any thoughts on how to address this or is it considered insignificant?

I would not think that the AP bearings normally see these lateral loads in a regular car truck. Does this appear to appreciably shorten their life in this type of service?

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Sat Feb 10, 2018 1:23 pm

Trying to find the GSMR thread, or threads.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2897

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7791

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24277

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=39166

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5975&p=27962

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11946

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477

EDM · **Posted:** Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:08 pm

I've seen advertisements for split roller bearings for marine propeller shafts in 'the yellow paper', Boats and Harbors. I have often thought that these might be suitable for inboard bearing lead and trailing trucks, which would eliminate the need to press off wheels when changing bearings.

One page I just looked at on the web showed bearings available for up to a fourteen inch shaft diameter, so I'm sure sizes that would be useful for rail applications would be available. Or am I missing something here? Lots of marine stuff is applicable to rail, and vice versa.

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Mon Mar 12, 2018 12:55 am

Frisco1522 · **Posted:** Mon Mar 12, 2018 12:44 pm

After several solid bearing problems, we finally converted the pilot truck to roller bearings. We used Amtrak wheelsets/bearings and Doyle MacCormack had boxes cast for us, which we machined. Never had a minute's worth of problem from then on. We also went through the pilot truck again and made sure everything was up to snuff.
We went on to convert the trailing truck and tender trucks to rollers.

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Tue May 29, 2018 12:18 am

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Tue May 29, 2018 12:45 am

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Tue May 29, 2018 1:02 am

Kelly Anderson · **Joined:** Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:52 am **Posts:** 2477