Custom Sockets and Thread Protectors

One of our railway jobs required the use of different hyrail wheels to clear their special trackwork. We had a good method for swapping these around with our old truck, but the new O4 (more on that here!) had a completely different axle/thread setup that required different tooling, none of which we had on hand.

After visiting every auto parts store in the area, it turns out you can convert an SAE spindle nut socket into a metric one with a hand file and some patience! A few sets of these were made and live in the truck now for easy wheel changeouts.

Changing out these heavy wheels around the fine-threaded axles was a challenge even with 2 people; a small slip would result in damaged threads that took hours to clean up by hand with a thread restoring file.

We worked with our contacts at Johnny's Boiler Shop and Metal Works to fabricate custom axle thread protectors that are screwed on the axle before wheels are taken off or put on, protecting the threads completely and even making install alignment easier. Note that these were specifically designed to not be easy to tighten, as overtorquing could lead to damaged threads as well.