List of railroad truck parts
Parts list of railroad trucks (bogies)

A bogie or railroad truck holds the wheel sets of a rail vehicle.
01Axlebox
An axlebox, also known as a journal box in North America, is the mechanical subassembly on each end of the axles under a railway wagon, coach or locomotive; it contains bearings and thus transfers the wagon, coach or locomotive weight to the wheels and rails; the bearing design is typically oil-bathed plain bearings on older rolling stock, or roller bearings on newer rolling stock.
Plain bearings are now illegal for interchange service in North America. As early as 1908 axle boxes contained a set of long cylindrical rollers allowing the axle to rotate. 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.
02Center pin
A large steel pin, or rod, which passes through the center plates on the body bolster and truck bolster. The truck turns about the pin, and stress is taken by the center plates.
03Center plate
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. The one on the truck may also be called center bowl.
04Truck bolster
Each truck has a bolster, a transverse floating beam, between the side frames. 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.
05Side bearing
There is one side bearing located on each side of the centerplate on the truck bolster. In case of a shared bogie on an articulated car, there are two on each side.
06Brake rigging
The brake rigging includes the brake lever, the brake hanger, the brake pin, the brake beam and the brake shoes.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “List of railroad truck parts”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Railroad truck, FM55-20.Fig8-8.png by Department of the Army, Washington DC, Public domain
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