Buckeye Trucks on modern Freight cars?

Common on tank cars such as this.

Welcome to the surface world, CWEX

That's a good photo. I'll watch passing freights more carefully. As the photo caption and Big Jim state, an extra set of wheels is necessary to spread the weight of high-capacity cars.

I definetly understand as it relates to distributing the weight, I just didn't realize they were so common or around today.  Thanks for the info Jim, Reading fan I appreciate it.

I have seen them on DODX flat cars.  They are needed to handle the weight of two Abrams tanks on a single flat car.

Thanks Ted...I gotta get out more...

I believe this to be because they were first made by the 'Buckeye Steel Castings' company.

That's a capital Buckeye.  They were designed and produced originally, to my recollection, by a steel company in Ohio.

In designing a three-axle truck, one problem is avoiding overloading the middle axle.  To do this with a jointed sideframe, the load has to be applied in two places, two-thirds of the distance between the center axle and the outboard axles.  There were several approaches to this problem, which required a sufficiently robust bolster to handle the weight.  Many of these required the truck to have a long wheelbase.  The Buckeye truck ingeniously overlaps the sideframes over the center journal; this provides the necessary 2/3 - 1/3 distance within tolerable length limits.  You can see in the photo that the center journal has arms on either side that connect with the overlapping side frames.

This was a very elegant solution to a vexing problem, and there were thousands of Buckeye trucks running around, and probably many still are.  They were common under high-capacity steam locomotive tenders.

EdKing

That is great information, thank you Ed.  On tenders is where I "thought" of them, never realizing they were used in freight car applications...certainly makes sense given how they spread the load.  Here is a link I found for "Columbus Castings" formerly Buckeye Steel castings.....pretty interesting.

http://www.columbuscastings.com/history.html

As perhaps an interesting aside, Buckeye Steel Castings was a company presided over by Samuel Prescott Bush, Great Grandfather of George HW Bush, President, and Great Great Grandfather of George W. Bush. Samuel Prescott Bush had an interesting railroad career, prior, such as Chief Motive Power Officer of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul RR. So those Buckeye trucks supporting Virginian battleship gons and Nickel Plate Road tender trucks, etc, contributed financial wherewithal to the family of 2 future presidents of the USA!

Well speaking of NKP tender trucks....

hello guys and gals........

What about those 8 wheel "Buckeye" trucks that is used on the Santa Fe 2900, 5011's tenders ?  I have one of those O scale sunset 3rd rail tenders and the 8 wheel trucks are MASSIVE when putting a 4 wheel 125 ton freight truck beside it

the woman who loves the S.F. 5011

Tiffany

No flies on Buckeyes . . .

EdKing

...a Jim Kreider design NKP tender truck (1:8 scale) and one of the most accurately modeled i've ever seen.  including the brake rigging, there are over 200 pieces that make up each truck.

That is just great craftsmanship.  The Buckeye truck truely is an ingenious design for distributing load.  And that 1/8 scale example is right on the money....wow that is really cool.  

for the rest of the story...

http://www.discoverlivesteam.c...er/index.htm#Chassis

...just in case anyone (else) wants to kick it up a notch.

Thanks for the link!

FWIW, did anybody notice the AEI tag in CWEX's photo?  "RPCX 765" in UMLER-eze.  There is a corresponding AEI tag near the cross compound air pump on the diagonally opposite corner of the locomotive.  Since the tender and loco are semi-permanently coupled, there is an AEI tag to the far right on each size - two total.