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Idea--Multiple Bearing Types? For Latter-Day Steam Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is online   Traindude 

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Posted 07 September 2020 - 08:48 PM

Multiple Bearing Types for Steam Locos--Trello Card

On many latter day steam locomotives, when roller bearings were first introduced, it was common for many locomotives to use a mix of bearing types as the railroads experimented with roller bearings.

For example, many locomotives in the early roller bearing era only had roller bearings on the driving wheels and continued to use plain (friction) bearings on the idler (lead and trailing truck/bogie) wheels. In many other cases, all wheels and axles were fitted with roller bearings but the side and main rods still had plain bearings.

I had this idea of specifying different bearing types for each mechanical component. So instead of:

ORTSBearingType ( Roller ) 


It would be something like this:

ORTSDriveWheelBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSIdlerWheelBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSRodBearingType ( Friction )


Or if we want to get even more detailed and advanced:
ORTSDriveWheelBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSIdlerWheelBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSSideRodCrankpinBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSSideRodKnucklePinBearingType ( Friction ) 
ORTSMainRodCrankpinBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSMainRodWristPinBearingType ( Roller )
ORTSValveGearPinBearingType ( Friction )


...obviously that last example is a little too extreme but you get my point, right? What do you think?

#2 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 07 September 2020 - 09:06 PM

If you have some idea of the actual difference in resistance it's probably an interesting idea. If not then it's just one more mystery about railroad physics.

#3 User is offline   darwins 

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Posted 07 September 2020 - 10:59 PM

For just one or two axles on a whole train the difference might not be worth the effort.

I did find a little information about bearing resistance in an old journal. (no pun intended) http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/pleasantry.gif


What I would like to see is a second variety of friction bearing.

ORTSBearingType ( Friction ) being used for oil lubricated bearings and

ORTSBearingType ( Grease ) being added for grease lubricated bearings - starting a whole train of grease lubricated wagons from rest on a cold morning requiring a greater force than for oil lubricated bearings - however this is definitely in the non-urgent category as far as requests go - for this one to work you would need to be able to pick up the slack of buffer and 3-link coupled wagons one at a time - and as I understand it that would require a complete rewrite of the advanced coupling code and may be more in order to work. http://www.elvastower.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/sweatingbullets.gif


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