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US 6,895,866 B2Granted
Rail road freight car with damped suspension
AssigneeNational Steel Car Limited
InventorJames W. Forbes
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An auto rack rail road freight car is provided for carrying low density, relatively high value, relatively fragile lading. The car has trucks that have multiple dampers in a four corner arrangement in the sideframes. The spring groups in the side frames are relatively soft, giving a low vertical bounce natural frequency. In an articulated embodiment, differentially placed ballast is mounted in a biased arrangement to load the coupler end trucks to encourage a dynamic response similar to the dynamic response of the internal trucks.
Claims59
A rail road freight car having:
- at least one rail car unit, said rail road freight car being supported by three piece rail car trucks for rolling motion along rail road tracks;
- at least a first rail car truck of said three piece rail car trucks having a rigid truck bolster and a pair of first and second side frame assemblies, said truck bolster having first and second ends;
- said first rail car truck having a suspension including first and second spring groups mounted between said first and second ends of said truck bolster and said first and second side frames respectively;
- said rail car truck suspension having a natural vertical bounce frequency of less than 2 Hz when said rail road freight car is unloaded;
- a first set of friction dampers mounted between said truck bolster and said first side frame assembly, a second set of friction dampers mounted between said truck bolster and said second side frame assembly;
- and
- said first set of friction dampers including at least a first friction dumper and a second friction damper, said first and second friction dampers being independently biased, and said second friction damper being mounted more laterally outboard than said first friction damper.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.