Railroad safety and broken wheel

[edblysard]

For those of you who live near or have to cross railroad tracks on your way to and from work…
This is why you should never pull right up to the gates…the scary part is this, what happened to the other half of the wheel?
Since no one reported having their car sliced in half or finding a rail car wheel stuck in the side of their van, our guess is it broke somewhere out in an un populated area and did no damage.
But, had this happened at a crossing, and the track speed is 50 mph through here, can you imagine the damage that would do to you and or your automobile?
Never get any closer than 50 feet to the tracks, even if the white line at the crossing is closer than that.

[joe greiner]

Apparently (according to Google), this happens often enough to create a "Broken Wheel Club" among railroad inspectors and mechanics.

Thanks for posting.

It looks like the bearing didn't have a joyful experience either.

Cheers,
Joe

[artme]

I know that aeroplane parts are subjected to very rigorous and stringent testing, including x-raying for minute flaws.

One would think that the same might apply to train wheels.

[mjmjm]

Do they still have those blokes that go around tapping wheels for faults?

[edblysard]

Yes, they are called Carmen, part of the railroads car repair department.
A good wheel will ring with a bell like tone, a cracked wheel will not ring.
You can hear bad wheels for the same reason, they dont ring or squeal when going over track joints, they make a "dead" clunk sound instead.
When one considers the million of miles rail cars travel, and the thousands upon thousands of wheels there are, defects like this would seem to be more common, but they are not.
Any trainman can bad order any car they think has a bad wheel set.
Railcar wheels have a standard enforced by the FRA, and are made by only a few companies, American car and Foundry being one, under strict quality control.
If any wheel is found on the road to have a defect, all wheels in that batch are inspected, a federal law enforces this.
Even though we know what caused this one, all the wheels in this ones batch are going to be inspected.
Every wheel is inspected on every train every time it enters a terminal, before any one can move the train.
All railroad car departments will be issued a bulletin to watch for this wheel set by makers mark and pay extra close attention looking for any cracks.
We found the reason for this, though.
It is a loaded coal car, several thousand tons.
The train it was part of had stopped for a red signal, waiting for a train ahead to clear the signal block...someone placed an old steel rail spike under this wheel, I suppose trying to see if they could derail the car.
Instead, it rode up and over the spike, and cracked on impact when it fell back onto the rail.
The next time the engineer applied the brakes, the wheel heated, then broke.
They drug this car ten miles, thorugh crossovers, switches and public crossings and it stayed the track, very lucky crew in many respects.
In my entire time on the railroad, I have seen two, this being one of them.

Do they still have those blokes that go around tapping wheels for faults?

[Pat]

I have a mate whom drives Suburban services on the City rail network NSW, before he takes a train out he has to inspect it including the wheels for obvious reason.