hot bearings

Yep , you can smell the cooking grease .Time to stop the engine immediately ,before you melt the babbit out of the liners . Usually the cause of the smell is one of the grease cellars has run out of grease , heating up a driver . A quick and dirty remedy is to pour valve oil all over the bearing ,and some of the oil will work its way into the crown bearing ,keeping it cool enought to get to the terminal . Another cause is a wheelset being out of quarter ,ands it always will run hot . They smell and smoke ,and will boil oil when hot enough .
Hot bushings on rods usually are throwing a lot of brass shavings ,always a sign of trouble . Light oil will remedy that .
Engineeers check bearing surfaces for ecessive heat at every opportunity . The old way was to touch them ,but new heat guns give an accurate electronic readout . Over 225 degrees is trouble .
Going downgrade , valve oil goes through the stack in a white smoke , especially when running light .