Hi,

What are, besides replacing everything, Is the beast way to combat growing flange heights? Are the stick lube system help? Is there cutting shoes available? The railroad is 100 lb rail rail, lots of curves and heavyweight passenger cars.


Thanks

The rail side:

Rail flange lubricators / greasers are commonly used to reduce both wheel and rail wear. They put a small amount of grease on the gauge side of the rail. The train wheel flanges can distribute the grease for quite a distance over time.

Selective rail grinding is also used to lengthen the life of both rails and wheels. The rail head is ground to different shapes depending if the rail is on a straight track, or the high side of a curve or the low side of a curve. The different shapes can help the conical wheels steer through a curve.

It was truly impressive to listen to a freight train rounding a sharp wye track after it was freshly ground. The train was totally silent of rail squeal.

The wheel side:

Wheels are ground to a specific shape to help them track straight on tangents and steer around curves.

I'd expect curve greasers would be the cheapest thing to work on first. You could start out by spreading just a little bit of grease with a brush just on the gauge side of the rail. Old mechanical greasers that work with a finger linkage that the train wheels hit are probably just sitting in scrap piles. They are not hard to figure out and fix up.

Replacing everything won't get the custom shapes and lubrication you need to reduce the squealing and wear.

Brian

If you look up "wheel flange lubricator" you find tons of options, both track mounted and locomotive mounted. On the old Rio Grande Moffat tunnel route they had devices that, when the wheels of a car pushed down on these small plunger things, shot heavy grease on the rail inside of curves every 500' or so in places that also made quite an environmental disaster. I walked the old SP Siskyou Summit route near the top around 2014 and there were several of these lubricators abandoned prior to the reopening several years ago.

SP 9010 was delivered in the early 1960's with a graphite stick applicator to the flange,these seem as simple as could be to me (see September 10, 2014 update):
http://sp9010.ncry.org/mechanical2.html

We had 4 flange oilers on our pilot truck on 1522. Built them from N&W drawings and fed them with a lubricator. Worked great for us. I think 611 may still use the same thing.

High flange is caused by tread wear, as long as you have sufficient flange thickness, wheel truing brake shoes that grind only the top of the flange will reduce your high flange. Rapid loss of flange thickness can be caused by several issues and can be addressed by flange lubrication.
Mike Tillger

Mike is right: if you're having enhanced treadwear, even though some flange-greasing strategies may alleviate some of it, you may be better with a directed top-of-rail lubrication arrangement. (Google "TOR lubrication" for a quick introduction to the range of discussions and products involved)

In my experience, which I don't claim to be definitive in any way, TOR requires different strategies and application methods than flange lubrication does. For example there are some reasonably good 'stick lubrication' products that mount on the trucks and push the end of long sticks against the flange contact area continuously; these have been actively commercially marketed from time to time, and I do see some in use from time to time, so there's some perception they not only work, but provide actual cost benefits. Whether they contribute to lowering the need for periodic dressing of wheel tread profiles, and hence reduce the overall rate of treadwear, I don't know.