The car inspector's chalk writing on the carbody says "off center!" I wonder what happened here.
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Slack action at its finest. Good catch
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The truck center has a depressed area at it's center and the car has a cross member with a rounded area at it's center. Both of these parts have a hole at their centers, the hole in the truck does not pass all of the way through, the hole in the car's cross member does go all of the way through. The two pieces fit together like a cup and saucer. the reason for the two holes is for an alignment pin which is approximately one inch in diameter and serves to line up the two pieces. When the rail car is lifted and the truck is rolled back to it's normal position. and the car is lowered into place. As is seen in this photo the car's truck has moved towards the center of the rail car and the locating pin has bent which causes the car to lean to one side. This is a fairly normal result of low speed switching operations and can be fixed by simply jacking the car up, rolling the truck to its proper position and replacing the bent pin with a new one and lowering the car. The only thing left to do is to repair any damaged brake linkage which is normal when a truck strays from it's place.
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| Posted by Andrew on May 30, 2012 | |
Would they need to 'shop' this car, or would they do the repair where it is now?
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The normal way to do this type of repair would be to use cribbing and a pair of portable car jacks. A car in this condition can be moved short distances very slowly with a locomotive, so if a rip track is near by the equipment needed may be on hand. If that is not the case then a mobile crane with the required capacity could be brought in to lift the car. The car's truck can be moved easily if on fairly level track, but if it must be moved up grade a piece of mobile equipment and a chain or cable may be used. Once the truck is lined up properly the pin is inserted into the hole in the truck and the car is lowered. Care must be used to prevent the rail car under repair from moving, either by chocking the car or by having it coupled to a piece of equipment whose brakes are set. Extreme care must be used to remove the bent pin and to insert the replacement pin. Some form of long handled grasping tool is strongly suggested to perform this task, but have seen this done by hand ! With that said I do not recommend any one putting any part of their body under a suspended load that may fall !
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A fine demonstration of the old saying - "Anything over 4mph is a collision!"
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