What is the Triangle Symbol on Hoppers

[NW Mailing List]

OK; here is the story.

In the pre-rollerbearing era, various experimental journal devices were tried.  One of these was an aluminum sleeve bearing that was applied to some covered hoppers.  One of these ran a hotbox up on the Shenandoan Valley someplace and had to be set out.  Since there were no sleeve bearing equipped wheels, a wheelset had to be shipped from Shaffers.

They took a G-1 gon out of storage somewhere and spotted it for loading a pair of wheels.  The car men loaded it and blocked it properly and it was ready to go.  I OK’d the car and it left.

Unfortunately I neglected to look at the G-1’s journals.  Turns out that every box was full of dirt and I think it made about 25 miles or so before it had to be set out.  Like I say, eight hotboxes, a record that will never be broken.  And it wasn’t like the car was heavily loaded; the G-1 was a fifty-ton car and the wheel set might have weighed 17 or 18 hundred pounds.

So that is how ol’ Ed won his ig-Nobel prize.

-Ed King


From: NW Mailing List 
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2020 6:14 PM
To: NW Mailing List 
Subject: Re: What is the Triangle Symbol on Hoppers

Ed,


Baggart!  You must had OK'd a car without any pads in any of the journal boxes.  Even though we worked on the Shaffers Crossing Shop Track together in those days, don't try to shift the blame for these hot boxes onto me!

Gordon Hamilton


On 9/25/2020 5:08 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:

  These pads were not limited to hopper cars.  They applied them to box cars, gons, you name it.  I’ve seen these triangles on the ends of tenders that used the pads.  

  The pads were an improvement on waste packing; waste could travel up the side of the journal and catch under the brass, causeing a lack of lubrication in that area and thus a hotbox.  The pads bridged the gap between “friction” journals and roller bearings, which started to come in about 1960.  N8w was hell on hotbox elimination; anything that stopped a train got into the Gross Ton Miles per Train Hour and was thus undesirable.

  Working in Shaffers Crossing Car Department, there was a lot of pressure about hotboxes on eastbound coal trains; the speeds were higher and that increased the possibility of hotboxes.

  BTW – I hold the record for the number of hotboxes on a four-axle freightt car, and it will never be broken.  Eight.  I still remember it and will tell anybody interested how it came about.

  - Ed King

  From: NW Mailing List 
  Sent: Friday, September 25, 2020 2:41 PM
  To: N&W Mailing List 
  Subject: Re: What is the Triangle Symbol on Hoppers

  The lettering in the triangle said, BOXES PACKED WITH PADS. 

  Stencilling was on the upper left corner of car sides, as I recall. 

  That was applied when lubricating journal pads came around.  The lettering was used in the 1950s and 1960s.  Once all the friction bearing cas had journal pads, the triangles went away.  Of course, by the 1960s, roller bearings were coming on the property in increasing numbers. 

  -- abram burnett 
  Puh-sizhun Sked-youled Turnips 

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