question for the list--when did the FRA[assumed] outlaw the
ribbed back freight wheels from interchange traffic and was there a
grace period for instillation of the flat back wheels--thanks j.Young

--- In STMFC@..., "bea9bea7" <estcbq@a...> wrote:

question for the list--when did the FRA[assumed] outlaw the
ribbed back freight wheels from interchange traffic and was there a
grace period for instillation of the flat back wheels--thanks

j.Young

J - Not sure when the chilled iron wheels were outlawed, but the
National Museum of Transport in St Louis has a wood ART refrigerator
car on display that has one relatively new ribbed-back wheelset (2-
wheels on axle) that has the date "1959" cast on each wheel. In
1948, approximately 85% of the freight car fleet had this type of
wheel, according to the CBC. They were definately made and applied
to cars throughout the 1950's.

On a related matter, MP and ART painted their wheels and truck
sideframes black up until the early 1960's. They also painted the
couplers black. The paint must have been special - did not hide any
defects - since wheels, sideframes and couplers were not supposed to
be painted. MP and ART were a spit-and-polish operation until the
late 1950's. I have seen black paint in good condition on MP MOW
boxcars' trucks and couplers as recently as the early 1980's.

Please excuse me if this paint-on-trucks/couplers issue has already
been beaten to death on the list - I am new here. A.T. Kott

A.T. Kott writes:

On a related matter, MP and ART painted their wheels and truck
sideframes black up until the early 1960's. They also painted the
couplers black. The paint must have been special - did not hide any
defects - since wheels, sideframes and couplers were not supposed to
be painted. MP and ART were a spit-and-polish operation until the
late 1950's. I have seen black paint in good condition on MP MOW
boxcars' trucks and couplers as recently as the early 1980's.

Please excuse me if this paint-on-trucks/couplers issue has already
been beaten to death on the list - I am new here.

No excuse needed. In fact, that's the first I've heard about this practice by MP and ART....and, quite useful given the fact that I'm fixing to weather an MP box car..

Mike Brock
STMFC Owner

Lots of roads and car lines used to paint freight car truck frames. I doubt that it was prohibited in the time-frame covered by this list. I can remember seeing Northern Refrigerator Car crews do it in New Orleans in the early 1960s - in the open air. On the Santa Fe, when freight cars came new from the builders in the '30s and '40s they mostly had black-painted trucks; when the railroad later shopped cars the trucks came out painted Mineral Brown.

This is about a diesel truck but it's a good story: When the Santa Fe was rebuilding F units into CF7s at Cleburne, Texas, I got a guided tour of the locomotive shops there from a foreman who shall remain nameless. He proudly showed us a freshly re-conditioned F-unit truck - the so called "Blomberg" type - that was painted silver all over, including the fronts and backs of the wheels. It was sparkly clean and quite an impressive sight. My traveling companion said he thought that the FRA required that the wheels be left unpainted. "Oh that," the foreman said. "That's just a little overspray."

so long,

Andy

Andy Sperandeo
Executive Editor
MODEL RAILROADER Magazine
262-796-8776, ext. 461
Fax 262-796-1142
asperandeo@...

In a message dated 3/8/05 1:59:43 PM Pacific Standard Time,
asperandeo@... writes:

<< Lots of roads and car lines used to paint freight car truck frames. I
doubt that it was prohibited in the time-frame covered by this list. >>

During 1948 the AAR added the following to Rule 3 of the Interchange Rules:

"(t) (3e) New or secondhand truck sides and truck bolsters must not be
painted with heavy asphaltic, tar or cement base paints: However, such parts may be
coated with light bodied paint that will not prevent detection of flaws or
cracks in ordinary inspection. Car wheels must not be painted.

Note. Existing truck sides and bolsters painted with heavy base paint, or
having accumulation of rust scale, must have such paint and scaled removed when
cars receive general repairs."

Regards,

Guy Wilber
Earthquake Faults, Nevada

--- In STMFC@..., Guycwilber@a... wrote:

During 1948 the AAR added the following to Rule 3 of the

Interchange Rules:

"(t) (3e) New or secondhand truck sides and truck bolsters must not

be

painted with heavy asphaltic, tar or cement base paints: However,

such parts may be

coated with light bodied paint that will not prevent detection of

flaws or

cracks in ordinary inspection. Car wheels must not be

painted.

Note. Existing truck sides and bolsters painted with heavy base

paint, or

having accumulation of rust scale, must have such paint and scaled

removed when

cars receive general repairs."

Hello Guy!

I appreciate the above reference to the rule prohibiting painting of
freight car wheels. Always heard that it was prohibited, but MP and
its subsidiaries painted almost ALL freight car wheels black from the
mid-1920's through at least 1951, and possibly later. They may have
also painted passenger car wheels and couplers too - do not know for
sure how frequently this was done. I wonder how they got by with
it! Maybe they used a special paint which made it easier to detect
cracks in the wheels?? I know it was done during the massive
rebuilding of single-sheathed boxcars in 1950-51 - many of these cars
lasted in MOW service into the 1980's - all with wheels painted black.

As an aside on the original question about chilled iron wheels -
there was an industry group that set standards for chilled iron
wheels. There were many manufacturers of these wheels across the
country. We even have models that represent wheels made in Denver,
Chicago and Tacoma - all made to the same standards.

They were cast in a "chill" in the mold. The molten iron, contacting
a cooler band of steel (where the tread is formed) in the mold, is
cooled quickly at the tread, creating a "white iron" which is
metallurgically different from the ordinary cast iron in the rest of
the wheel. This white iron in the tread was much tougher and harder
that the rest of the wheel. The cast iron in the remainder of the
wheel was more resiliant and resistant to shocks than the tread -
really a nifty combination that was easy to manufacture. Maybe
someone here is a metallurgist and can explain this better.

I think that one-wear wrought steel wheels and multiple wear steel
wheels became the de-facto standard for new freight cars made after
WWII, but even some new cars were made with the chilled iron wheels
(SAL boxcars in the late 1940's?). They were cheaper. The "standard"
in the 1940's was for a car to have chilled iron wheels - any other
type of wheel required a stencil, usually on the B-end of the car,
indicating any other type of wheel - ie. "1-W WROT STL WHLS" etc.
Also, I think most, if not all, of the chilled iron wheels were used
on 50-ton or less capacity cars - 70-ton cars almost always had steel
wheels when built. The 1959-dated wheels under the ART refer an the
National Museum of Transport were surely a replacement set for a worn
out pair. I recall that the rest of the wheels under that car were
from the early 1950's.

A.T. Kott