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Independent railroad wheels on Freight Cars.
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by Paul Milenkovic</i> <br /><br />futuremodal: <br /> <br />How does that Southern 100 work -- are the axles guided in any way or do they self-steer within those 1-axle trucks using the wheel tread cone angle? Did anything ever become of it (it dates from 1965) or did they decide it was not worth the bother? <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />The Southern 100 and other single axle railcars had short enough wheelbases to allow the rigidity to negotiate curves, aided by the tapered design of railwheels. I think the 100 had only 25' between the axles per unit. The problem with the 100 wasn't the rigid wheelbase, rather they had problems with the pin couplings between the units. That and the non-standardization did it in. <br /> <br />The later single axle cars in the form of the TTOX spine cars had some radial "give" in their axles, but not true radial steering. This allowed them a wheelbase of 36'. The cars were recently pulled from service a few years ago, mainly due to their short platforms that could only handle trailers 48' long and 65,000 lb max (and no containers), but also due to their light weight. This has been discussed on other threads, but I believe they were considered a derailment potential. <br /> <br />Speaking of TTOX, I was an advocate of remanufacturing the TTOX "Four Runner" cars (four TTOX cars connected by drawbars to form one unit) into a single axle/articulated hybrid with longer platforms, beefed up suspension, and larger wheels/journals. Thus, instead of an A+A - A+A - A+A - A+A design (if I am allowed to use locomotive wheel designation to describe rolling stock), you would have an A+B+A - A+B+A (with "B" designating a standard two axle articulated connection). By replacing the first and third drawbars/single axles with a standard articulated connection, and leaving the single axles on the coupler ends and the second drawbar connection, you partially alleviate the rigidity of the single axle wheelbases, which would allow you to lengthen the wheelbase between the single axle end of each platform and the articulated end. <br />
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