0t---Russian Rail

Spent most of the video wondering what it had to do with rail and why dual headstocks and cross slides. All was revealed...

Thanks for the post!

Very cool. I first had the impression the refurbishing / rebuilding of the machine was typical in that something was being rebuild for some specific purpose. Good to see this and most people would not have a clue about using these machines. I suppose that Rail infrastructure has been vastly ignored. I think they did not have much choice in doing so. It will be interesting to see how the vast reserves of energy change Russia’s prosperity.

I'm fairly stupid...what is that machine doing with the axle assembly, it's not clear to me.

Stuart

atomarc said:

I'm fairly stupid...what is that machine doing with the axle assembly, it's not clear to me.

Stuart

Click to expand...

Probably "similar" needs . and rules .. in Russia as came into being in the USA?

The goal was that each axle "set" had identical rolling diameters and shapes.. so the wheels centered o nthe crown of the rail's shape and ran true at low rolling resistance and least wear - to rails as well as"tires"....rather than skid or try to track in an arc.

Absolute diameter wasn't a big deal, so long as each pair MATCHED.

The method, before metrology made it silly, was to turn the axle and both wheels at the same setup, then "burnish" the "tire" to improve hardness and life expectancy a tad.

Mine-haul rail - usually narrow gage - was not under the same strict rules as main-line. So Galis had two "dual headstiock" wheel lathes in about 50-inch that "mostly" sat idle for a year - or several years - at a go.

- A Niles powered only at the conventional (left) HS end, the right hand "headstock" with bearings, but not powered.

, A Shepard-Niles with power to BOTH left and right "headstocks".

One of the museums PM is "aware of" - Tuckahoe, perhaps? has a comparable Shepard-Niles. ISTR is has a greater swing. Passenger steam locomotive Drivers were waaay larger that ore-car wheels.

Both of those that Galis (FMC) owned were all-manual, War One or thereabouts vintage, and, as said, both mostly sat IDLE for years between jobs.

During my time there, we did have a rebuild contract for a mine out in Utah that had a 35 mile standard gage haul rail to the nearest main line. SOME, not all, of the wheels for THAT contract had to meet Federal over-the-rail specs.

So I got to use each of those old hoors exactly ONCE, each.



I did the setup and started the task on 2d shift under very hands-on oversight of our foreman. George had come up off the same shop floor, knew his stuff. Great mentor.

AFAIK, third shift had no one their foreman wanted to put on it. So day shift finished it out, and I never did see the whole process.

There wasn't really anything inherently able to hold a match of both wheels at a go, so the gain the Federal railroad administration - or whatever it had been called - was seeking seemed a tad irrelevant.

OTOH, G'Dad had been the B&O roundhouse foreman, not I. I was a naif of about 19 years old at the time, and my Engineering studies, daytime, were Electrical, not ME and surely not railroad related atall!

So all I gave a damn about as to holding onto a decent-paying Union job was adhering to MIL SPEC "MIL-T-FP-41".

Make It Like - The - Freakin'Print -4 1nce!

Well "always", actually.

atomarc said:

I'm fairly stupid...what is that machine doing with the axle assembly, it's not clear to me.

Stuart

Click to expand...

Anything needed.

Note the inner square turrets ? one has a roller on it, to go into the fillets.
I've seen them with an electronic force transducer, operator will roll to a prescribed pressure & time, to help in stress's on the fillets.

As well as re-cutting bearing surfaces, truing up etc.

The Wheel tools are to re-profile as well as matching diameters.

The BART interurban trains in the San Francisco bay area are Russian gauge not the world standard 4'8.5". They are 5 feet even. For the same reason as Russia did it. No one else can use their trains on "our rails" without going through some major changes at each end. I believe India may use the same broad gauge as well
Bill D

Bill D said:

The BART interurban trains in the San Francisco bay area are Russian gauge not the world standard 4'8.5". They are 5 feet even. For the same reason as Russia did it. No one else can use their trains on "our rails" without going through some major changes at each end. I believe India may use the same broad gauge as well
Bill D

Click to expand...

There are all kinds of gauges out there.
List of track gauges - Wikipedia

Lordy, that shop where they did the rebuild looked kind of rough but they did a good job of it.

Don't know about Russian practice, but her in the US rules for wheel and axle work are very specific.

What they are rebuilding is an "Axle Lathe"

It has capacity to turn both wheels and axles.
Friction axles (plain bearing babbitt) are required to be finished by burnishing.....The application of rollers run against the surface to harden and finish the surface.

At the museum where i wasted much of my life we have a Sellers axle lathe.
Burnishing rollers are on opposing posts connected by a leadscrew that ties both posts together so that as the handwheel is advanced the outer pot moves toward the machine center while the back post advances toward the center ()moving opposite) this removes the squeezing force on the opposed rollers from the post ways, rather into the screw tying the two posts together....
There are both a front and rear post set to cover the journals on each end of the axle set....

There are also provision to mount cutting tools on the posts (rollers swing out of the way...
For wheel work early machines used profile cutting tools and the cut is a plunge move...
Wheel treads were never burnished....Just cut to profile. Size gauged using a Pie tape , or more correctly a wheel tape. The tape has standoffs that butt against the wheel flange to locate the measuring point
on the wheel profile.
Pratt & Whitney were the suppliers of both the wheel tapes and wheel profile gauges.......
Wheel profile was done using two posts and two mirrored tools to cut the profile.....Later machines used tracers to produce the wheel profile....

Today freight car wheels are almost never cut on the OD...When needing servicing new wheels are pressed on to the axles....The wheel profile being done on the bare wheel....
Locomotive wheels are still profiled and there are systems that do that work with the wheel still mounted on the loco....

Museum also had a Sellers 90" wheel lathe. Buil;t to turn the treads of 90" steam locomotive wheels...Both headstocks are powered..drive is through hydraulic face jaws that press against the outside
face of the drivers on each side.....Faceplates are fitted with clearance holes to accept the crank pins on the drivers.....
Rough weight of the lathe is aprox 85 tons.


Cheers Ross