Re: What is the most difficult part of a running gear overhaul?

The worst running gear job I ever worked on was a (Inverted) Stephenson gear which had slipped an eccentric. The eccentric was only held in place with a couple of set screws. everything on that side got bent. the only refence was a series of dimples punched into the axle. To see them you had to crawl in between the boiler and the drive wheels, or crawl in from under the ashpan.
Both eccentric blades were bent and after being straightened they bent again and had to be replaced. At some point in its life someone had installed all 4 eccentric blades backwards (and welded the nuts holding them to the link hanger) so they were racking the eccentric.
it was one of those jobs that just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Before we were done, we had the locomotve up on blocks and the running gear completely out. before we put it back in we had woodruff keys installed on all 4 eccentrics.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2012 01:36PM by stevejb123.