List of railroad truck parts

An axle box, also known as a journal box in North America, are the mechanical subassembly on each end of the axles under a railway wagon, coach or locomotive; they contain bearings and thus transfer the wagon, coach or locomotive weight to the wheels and rails; the bearing design is typically oil-bathed plain bearings on older rollingstock, or roller bearings on newer rollingstock. [1]

Plain bearings are now illegal for interchange service in North America.[2][3][4] As early as 1908 axle boxes contained a set of long cylindrical rollers allowing the axle to rotate.[5][6] It was also used on steam locomotives such as the Victorian Railways A2 class, the LMS Garratt, the LSWR 415 class, and the GCR Class 1.[5]

A large steel pin—or rod—which passes through the center plates on the body bolster and truck bolster.[7] The truck turns about the pin, and stress is taken by the center plates.[7]

One of a pair of plates which fit one into the other and support the car body on the trucks allowing them to turn freely under the car.[7] The one on the truck may also be called center bowl.[8]

The frame at either side of the truck.[3][4]

Each truck has a bolster—a transverse floating beam—between the side frames.[9] It is the central part of every truck on which the underframe of the railcar or railroad car is pivoted through the center pivot pin.[7][9]

There is one side bearing located on each sde of the centerplate on the truck bolster.

• US Army Field Manual FM 55-20, Figure 8-8, Department of the Army, Washington DC
• Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia 1970
• Forney, Matthias N. (1879). The Railroad Car Builder's Dictionary. Dover Publications.
• White, John H. (1978). The American Railroad Passenger Car. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801819652. OCLC 2798188.
• White, John H. Jr. (1993). The American Railroad Freight Car: From the Wood-Car Era to the Coming of Steel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-4404-5. OCLC 26130632.