Am intrigued about greasing wheels on the curves...
Had a trial run on Edinburgh`s new £1,000,000,000, yup 1 billion pounds, Tram.
Take it advantage of light over heavy rail is an ability to handle short in clines and tight curves, Edinburghs Ghost Train has tight curves which soun ded quite noisy inside.
Is it usual for tram systems to use greasing systems on the curves?
What wears first , the rails or the wheels?
In message , Adam Aglionby writes
snip
Both I guess if abrasive dust gets mixed with the grease.
There's a lot more rail than wheel, so you would expect to see the effect on wheels first. You get sliding contact when a wheel flange contacts the side of the rail; ideally this doesn't happen even on bends, because the wheel set is designed to "steer", but you do end up getting contact at points, crossovers, etc. I believe Railtrack use automatic lubricators on some bends. Lubricators are also sometimes used on "gantry" cranes, typically a sort of spring-loaded graphite stick.
You want to keep lubricants away from the rail head, to avoid adversely affecting traction.
The wheels last 20 to 30 years. But they are expensive when you have hundreds of them. The rails need repair after 20 years. The check rails wear if there is no lubrication.
Here's the track welder welding the check rail:
It will need three passes to fix the worn part.
On Wed, 09 Jul 2014 11:02:12 +0100, Nightjar Plastic pipe comes in various grades, so you need to know what you are
I have a hundred metres of new 4" drain pipe left over from the large building next door. It's about 4mm wall. It looks a good size to be able to pack the extremely stiff grease into. The grease gun that is being used is too small to fill easily. If my experiment pushing grease along the small tube doesn't work I'll have to use a steel pipe.
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