GRAIN PORT OF VICTORIA
Trackside
assistance
Changing wheel on
locomotive requires
more than a jack
H
By Joe Kelley
ave you ever wondered how to change out the
wheel of a 418,000-pound locomotive? Well,
maybe that isn’t a question that crosses one’s
mind every day. However, it is a question that
had to be answered by Commodity Switching
Company this February. One of the twelve wheels on CSC’s
six axle SD-40 (locomotive 6014) had a flange that was
becoming alarmingly thin. If the wheel flange becomes to
thin it could easily “pick a switch,” as railroaders say. “Picking a switch” occurs when the wheel flange of a locomotive
entering a switch, where the switch points are facing the
coming traffic, could split the gap of where the moveable
part of the switch aligns flush against the existing rail, thus
separating the switch. This is especially dangerous if it occurs with a locomotive. The switch could be damaged, and
switches or switch panels run anywhere from $50,000 for
a manual switch up to $500,000 for the radio-controlled
switches found on most class one railroads’ mainline tracks.
Additionally, the locomotive and/or connected railcars could
derail and overturn. Regular equipment inspection and
preventative maintenance becomes a must.
Lonestar Locomotive and Maxim Crane performed
20
the wheel swap on behalf of CSC. The term “wheel swap”
is a bit misleading because in reality we are not replacing one wheel, but an entire drive axle. Maxim had its
190-ton crane in position to lift up the back end of the
CSC 6014 locomotive. Once the locomotive’s rear end had
been lifted about four feet in the air, the three-axle truck
assembly was pulled from underneath of the locomotive.
The 190 Liebherr hydraulic crane than slowly lowered
the locomotive to a set of resting blocks. Once 6014 was
sitting securely on the resting blocks, the Liebherr lifted
the 6,000 lbs. electric motor from the number five axle
and placed it on the ground. When that was complete, the
crane lifted the 4,000 pounds out of the truck assembly
and placed the bad axle on the ground and replaced it
with a new axle. Once the new axle was positioned