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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).
Centrifugal force and stability: When a train navigates a curve, centrifugal force acts outward, which can destabilize the train. To counter this, tracks are often tilted (superelevation) to balance the force. Wheel-rail interaction: Tight curves can cause higher lateral forces between wheels and rails, increasing wear and the risk of derailment.
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.
Rail vehicle wheels are usually mounted on a solid axle, so they turn at the same speed.When a vehicle turns the outer wheel has to travel further than the inner wheel. On a road vehicle, this is usually achieved by allowing the wheels to move independently, and fixing the front wheels in an arrangement known as Ackermann steering geometry.
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.
More commonly, on freight railroads, geometry cars travel at track speed (up to 70 miles per hour) to minimize service disruptions. Current track geometry cars may cover large portions of the system in a single day. Many times, maintenance gangs will follow the geometry car and fix defects as the geometry car moves along the track. [4] [page ...
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A train track on a triple torus. In the mathematical area of topology, a train track is a family of curves embedded on a surface, meeting the following conditions: The curves meet at a finite set of vertices called switches. Away from the switches, the curves are smooth and do not touch each other.