Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Freight Car Springs but were Afraid to Ask

well hiy everybody welcome welcome to another edition of that's real Road where we bring a railroad to you we love doing it too glad to have you with us and uh Today's Show we're going to talk about freight car springs I've had uh many requests in the past uh people want to know about Springs especially watching them being compressed uh while they're being loaded and I guess you call it decompressed uh while the cars are being uh dumped so we're going to show you that I'm going to talk to you about uh prank car springs okay pretty interesting stuff I think so I hope you will enjoy today's show all right we're up here at the uh where they load the cars right now and it was down here tamping a little bit ago I had to clear up we're in the side track so exciting uh had to clear up the train just came in um typically if the plant prep plant is not running very well then uh we'll have the train come in and pull through and uh tamper here and the regulator will go on out but the prep plant is running really really good coal today really quick and uh we don't uh we're not going to hold the train up today so so we have to wait for him to get loaded but that's all right because uh it's really really good to see him running coal and a lot of it and uh yeah that's really good to see okay so uh we have orders today not hold the train up but that's uh sometimes you got to wait and that's okay like I said it's really good to see him running coal really is all right [Music] okay that car is loaded got 115 ton in it really doesn't go down very far you watch the uh bolster go down push those down and that's the weight limit 51,000 most of these aluminum cars are 51,000 light and uh 235,000 on with the coal in there so it's about 115 ton they put in there [Music] [Music] Okay saw that one get down pretty good [Music] these are freight car America they're a little bit lighter the other cars that we have are Trinity cars okayy there you have it [Music] [Music] [Music] how about that those Springs should never be compressed it should never be compressed all right so that is a defect if those Springs are compressed they have uh those D5 Springs have about a 50% uh Reserve capacity in them so if they do get compressed oh sorry about that they do get compressed that is a defect it's a weak spring should always be a little bit of a gap in there on those coils all right how about that there you go stay tuned there's more to come okay here's a broken spring all right now the problem with a broken spring one broken spring out of there is not an a defect okay but the problem is that puts more load on the other spring nests in there okay so I said one broken spring like that is not a deal in but it's uh say we uh try to get that fixed as soon as we can get this car out and get it fixed but again that puts an extra load on the other Springs how about that you know the Springs are part of your suspension system in there someday I'll do another video on that suspension system in that uh truck set there are uh these are 100 T cars so they have the corresponding strength Parts in the truck sets for 100 ton cars they also have 70 ton cars they have 125 ton cars and each of those have corresponding parts in their truck sets for uh for those also all right okay I got to go get a can of orange paint out of my tamper and Tamp and uh paint that spring so I'll be back with more now one thing uh Broken Springs if you see a car let's say you have a whole train here you see a car going down the uh track and you got one car flopping around possibility uh one possibility that car is flopping around is because you got broken spring or weak Springs in there all right that's not always the case why a car is flopping around uh they have car these cars have side bearings in them in there uh the side bearing might be broken or the wear plate under there uh might be too thin or there might not be a correct adjust between the side bearings and that wear plate that's in there probably can't see that beanie's moving I'm it's in there that now that particular bearing if you can see it's a constant contact so it's constantly in contact with that wear plate in there uh some of our cars have roller bearings and they have to have a certain uh yeah they have to have a certain clearance so that's another possibility you can see a rocking car if you see a whole bunch of rocking cars then you probably would got a track problem where uh track's going like that but if you just see one or one or so cars then uh might want to check for these broken Springs or weak Springs that sometimes the Springs get DEF formed also pretty cool stop huh yeah everybody sees cars rocking and think well you got bad track well that may not necessarily be the case might be in your cars all right and might be another problem in that damping system on that truck set causing the car to rock too all right there we go okay I got my uh it24 here and this is the easy way to lift that bolster up so you can get the replac Springs if need B just lift that up with the forks Hydraulics nice and that does will come right out of there see that pretty cool huh easy easy easy easy this is an old chunk truck set so pull that out of there I wanted to show you something all right how about that pretty cool [Music] stuff okay I said these are old uh used uh truck sets some people call them trucks and our friend across the uh Pond lot them call them Bogies anyway I'll do another video series on the truck sets at some point in the future but I wanted to show you this I just pulled that one out of there but like I said these are junk and those Springs would never be used again anyway uh they've got a probably a permanent set in them so if this truck set ever gets rebuilt all the Springs will get replaced but this is a defect missing spring a single missing spring is a defect bad order car take it out right away uh here's another uh defect that has to get taken out right away is if these spring packs are twisted at an angle like that another defect I've seen them actually where this has come out and uh been out on on this piece too that is a defect effect that has to get taken out right away like I said just a single broken spring is not a defect that has to get taken out right away uh that car can get taken and unloaded and then it should be taken out if it's a broken spring but these are defects it's got to get taken out and uh you know if it happens out here then we're going to obviously unload it over here and then take it out so those are a couple more defects wanted to show you uh I got a lot to talk about this is a big subject this is called a nest of Springs some people call them a spring pack all right it's a helico coil uh some Springs some helico coils are wound hot and some are wound cold and I don't know what the difference uh for the application between a cold coiled spring and a hot coiled spring is and I don't know if these are cold or hot coiled I don't know that but this is interesting because in our cars uh you know we've got just got a heavy load uh we're right at the limit 286,000 lb with our car and our tear you know we put 115 tons in each car but it's pretty heavy application for these 100 T cars okay we're right at the limits but uh different cars have different configurations on their Springs uh we have nine Springs where the uh spring sets down in there that's called a spring Nest all right where they sit this is the spring Nest okay not all we have nine nine nests of spring in there or nine spring packs however you want to say it okay not all cars have nine uh our particular cars have an outer coil an inner coil and an inner inner coil some cars depending again on the weight of the car will only have a outer coil some cars will have an outer and an inner coil Okay and like I said our cars have the outer inner and inner inner now here's what I want to want to show you this when you're putting these together see how this goes this way this next one goes the opposite way I dropped this one we'll get it up here and uh put put it in and it goes the same way as the outer coil would go like that all right that's how they get set in there see that that's D in there see this is opposite this is opposite from this and this goes the same as the outside okay all right very good we'll uh show you some more stuff here then uh I've got a uh train coming in so I've got a few minutes before I can get out on track when he comes in he's going to pull through and let me out so I got a few minutes to wait he'll be here in about 10 or minutes or so so I got to wait on him to come in uh very good we'll tell you some more stuff good stuff I love this stuff all right I said this is uh this is a junk spring it will no longer ever get used again it'll get replaced with new if uh if it ever uh gets rebuilt the truck set and this is the uh spring group pattern on our Hopper open the hopper cars so you have three in a row then three in a row in the center and three in a row on the other side spring group that is a group of Springs Okay and like uh not all cars have the same spring groups patterns all right uh you see this is on our Ballas car you can see it's quite a different pattern okay so have two on the outside three in the center and two on the inside now those are a D3 spring all right I'm going to talk to you about that uh here in a little bit the D 3 the design Three Springs okay hold on I got to get off track okay this is a one group pattern here that's one group pattern there is another pattern [Music] and here is yet another pattern and again you know some of these some of the cars may not have all that number of Springs uh they may not be arranged in that particular pattern or any of these particular patterns uh they might be arranged in a different this is for a barber truck set okay uh it just depends on what what the car is and uh you know sorry what they're carrying the various Springs okay let me show you another thing here all right uh here is a brand new spring and this is the old one that I took out of here earlier in the video um see the uh inner ones this this one is a little bit more fatigued than the new ones uh this one is fairly close and I'm just doing this by eye they make us make a gauge um to uh gauge that let me show you that gauge right now before I forget um okay we do not have one of these gauges here um all right let still going sun behind me that's a gauge okay like I said the professional car shops have a gauge um but that's what it looks like we do not have one here we just replace the Springs if needed okay so got that covered uh these have a d designation the design on them they're uh usually stamped usually stamped on the first coil um this is a D5 five okay D5 spring that's the most common type of spring uh used on freight cars they do have other D designations of design all right uh sometimes they're stamped on the inner ring they're not always stamped this particular spring here is not stamped okay so let me uh show you that he just shut our locomotive down uh number 3098 you heard it running but uh okay d5s are the most common um let me show you this this is a okay and again I got to take my glasses off so I can see where we at here a freight car there you go um you look at the the D3 I was telling you the outer is a very unforgiving spring look over here at the uh com what it takes to compress this now these Springs do have when they're in the car about a 50% Reserve capacity okay so they should never be driven solid this D5 outer that I showed you there's the dimensions on a stenciling on them usually most cars do uh not every single car out there has a stenciling on the the uh end sheet or sometimes on the side [Music] um gives you the number and type of Springs that are required in a spring group for that particular car here's uh here's ours we have on our Hopper cars okay very good all right we'll try to uh catch him here uh unloading the car so you can see the Springs coming up all right very good good hope you're enjoying Today's Show okay get ready [Music] there you have it how about that okay we uh we what you watch another one here both the both sides come up equal all right [Music] [Music] [Music] all right hope you enjoyed Today's Show and found it educational thank you thank you thank you very much for tuning in and [Music] watching railroad I love it all right

Channel: ccrx 6700 That's Railroadin!

Views: 79,568

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Id: Qujy5gjm_8I

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024