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Most train wheels have a conical taper of about 1 in 20 to enable the wheelset to follow curves with less chance of the wheel flanges coming in contact with the rail sides, and to reduce curve resistance. The rails generally slant inwards at 1 in 40, a lesser angle than the wheel cone.
A train wheel or rail wheel is a type of wheel specially designed for use on railway tracks. The wheel acts as a rolling component, typically press fitted onto an axle and mounted directly on a railway carriage or locomotive , or indirectly on a bogie (in the UK), also called a truck (in North America).
A wheeltapper signing off after checking the wheels of a train at Budapest-Keleti railway station in 2014. He has placed his long hammer on the train's buffers. A wheeltapper is a railway worker employed to check the structural integrity of train wheels and that axle boxes are not overheating.
Centering is actually accomplished through shaping of the wheel. The tread of the wheel is slightly tapered. When the train is in the centre of the track, the region of the wheels in contact with the rail traces out a circle which has the same diameter for both wheels. The velocities of the two wheels are equal, so the train moves in a straight ...
The horizontal (cone-shaped) rim makes contact with the slightly convex top of a steel rail in different (horizontal) places so that the outer wheel has a larger effective diameter than the inner wheel. With both tram and train wheels, this happens naturally because the tires are cone shaped sloping surfaces: the inside diameter is a few ...
Train wheels rolling over the spikes loosened them, allowing the rail to break free and curve upwards sufficiently that a car wheel could get beneath it and force the end of the rail up through the floor of the car, writhing and twisting, endangering passengers. These broken rails became known as "snake heads". [14]
Especially in steam days, wheel arrangement was an important attribute of a locomotive because there were many different types of layout adopted, each wheel being optimised for a different use (often with only some being actually "driven"). Modern diesel and electric locomotives are much more uniform, usually with all axles driven.
An historical railway occupation; people employed to tap train wheels with hammers and listen to the sound made to determine the integrity of the wheel; cracked wheels, like cracked bells, do not sound the same as their intact counterparts. The job was associated with the steam age, but they still operate in some eastern European countries.