Did large Railroads that built their own steam power and rolling stock, also forge their own axels and Wheels or did they purchase from a commercial supplier? Assuming there were commercial suppliers early on.

Happy New Year!

Paul

The short answer is, "all of the above". Shops capable of building their own power would by necessity have forge shops and foundries capable of that work, so they would make or buy needed parts based on their specific schedule vs. budget constraints. The exception to that rule would be any aftermarket and/or trademarked parts such as BoxPox wheel centers, etc., which would have to be bought from the manufacturer. I suspect that the N&W stuck with spoked driving wheel centers after most other class ones had switched to aftermarket wheel centers due to their desire to make the parts in-house.

I expect that virtually all of the railroads bought their tires from specialty suppliers.

Likewise, I have never heard of any railroad attempting to make their own roller bearings.

Kelly, that's BoxPok, pronounced with a long O as in 'box spoke'

If I'm ont mistaken, Baldwin cast their own Boxpok centers (I think some of the ATSF 4-8-4 drivers are so marked) and I suspect this would have been done at the facility that was built at Eddystone in the late '20s, just a year or two before the merger with Commonwealth ( to form GSC)

Something interesting came up on the old steam_tech group: very, very late in the age of steam, a manufacturer tried to sell centrifugally-cast locomotive axles -- these would have been a superior product.

Or as my boss used to say, "A pox on your box."

It's been my impression that the Baldwin wheel centers were of their own design to avoid impinging on the Boxpok patent.

The Baldwin Disk and the BoxPox driver center was an attempt to get away from the "Spoke" driver center (pronounced Spoke with a long "O"); these proving very fragile .

So Mr. Ellsworth, was centrifugal, or spin casting, used in the Diesel age if it was so superior? Axel is an axel after all.

"Baker" valve gear delivered and supervised the installation of their products due to liabilities concern.

I had this question in Roanoak; the shop facility seem pretty small. E.B.T. Built it's own hopper cars but I doubt if they made axels or wheels.

The 70" drivers on a Reading T-1 have "Boxpox by Baldwin" cast into the drivers.

Whether it was an original Baldwin design or Baldwin was licensed by the patentholder I don't know but I suspect the latter since they used the same spelling.

Phil Mulligan

This may not answer the original question, but it is an amazing old film of how one company did it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcbTXlMSCwk

Greetings:
In addition to the Boxpok and Baldwin Disc Wheels, there similar cast driving wheels made by The Locomotive Finished Material Co. of Atchison, Kansas. These were characterized by openings which were more angular than those of the other manufactures.
Some of the Santa Fe's 4-6-2 type steam locomotives were equipped with these when they were rebuilt. As I recall, the 3415 owned by The Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad Museum has them.
J.David
PS: The Tang Shan Locomotive & Rolling Stock Works cast their own Boxpok style driving wheel. The axles came from another factory. JDC

EBT has a narrow-gauge axle lathe (not talking about the wheel lathe, but an honest to God axle lathe), and a car wheel boring machine. I would be shocked if they cast their own car wheels, but they did finish bore them and assemble them into wheel sets. Whether they used the axle lathe to finish new car axles or just to tune up used ones when the wheels were being changed, I don't know.

One of those commercial suppliers was--and remains today--Standard Steel in Burnham, Pa., just north of Lewistown and connected to the rail world by the Juniata Valley Railroad, formerly Conrail/PC/PRR/Mifflin & Centre County RR.

Standard Steel originated as the Freedom Forge in 1795, started casting RR wheels around 1856, and at one point was linked to loco builder Burnham, Williams & Co. (later Baldwin); the town is named for that Burnham.

In 2011, Standard Steel merged with Japanese company Sumitomo Industries and is now known as Nippon Steel, still casting wheels and axles for railroad builders.

Standard Steel, for the last 100 years or so, has made wrought wheels, not cast wheels. They also forge axles with a CNC forging hammer. They have, or maybe had, a ring mill, but they have not made tires in some time. New wheel manufacturing equipment for their wheel production was put in about 30 years ago. I think this was associated with redesign of all their wheels from straight plate wheels to curve plate wheels.

Familiar with Standard Steel as they had a plant near here.

Revisiting E.B.T.: they probably melted iron and poured wheels in "Chill" molds.

An axle is not just an axle in this context.

Toward the end of big steam, it became common to 'gun-drill locomotive driver axles -- you can see this dramatically on Union Pacific 844. The more advanced version of this had the bore at the wheel seats smaller than that in the denter of the axle, which poses an interesting machining exercise.

Centrifugal casting, aside from the better metallurgy over simple forging, has the advantage that much of the bore will already be open as an artifact of the method. Only reasonably simple boring and dressing operations will be needed.

Stresses in a large 4-8-4 or 2-10-4 main driver axle far exceed anything in diesel practice, and some of the particular stresses due to rod drive are not continuous, as they are with a geared traction motor.

Incidentally, it would be a grim thing indeed if EBT was 'casting' wheels in "chill molds" in their last years. Prior to 1979, neither of those things was acceptable practice in wheel manufacture, and the use of the cast-iron ring to produce a chilled carbide tread was something that could lead to dangerous fracture.

Here is an accessible introductory discussion of wheel technology:

https://www.forgemag.com/articles/84479-full-steam-ahead-railroad-wheel-manufacturing

Note the general method of tread hardening.

Never the less, chilled C.I. wheels were a standard item back in the day.

Industrial History

If you find a wheel set with the cast ribbed back face, and look at the apex of the flange, you can often see the parting line from the mold. Regarding the EBT's wheels, if someone were to look at a wheel to see if they have one of the popular wheel maker's name cast into its face. Otherwise, one could look in the EBT pattern storage to see if a wheel pattern and chills are there.