I’ve googled it but just can’t seem to grasp it. How do they stay on as well as they do at such high speeds, with so few incidents of crashing or derailing? Especially when anything could be lying across the track waiting to get lodged in the wheels.
I hear so often that trains are so safe, but I don’t think I can get over my anxiety with them until I understand *why* they’re safe.
In: 29
Train wheels aren’t disks with a flat rim. They’re shaped more like a slice off the bottom of a cone (pointing to the inside of the track), so they curve in. The train’s very considerable weight then causes the wheel to sit in the lowest point in the middle. Moving to the left or right would cause the train to slightly lift, which it’s weight counteracts. This keeps the train in the middle of the track. There is also a flanged edge on the outsides of the wheel, which would have to skip off the track completely for the whole train to come off the track. Lifting a train that high is very difficult, and would take a significant impact to do.
The left and right pairs of wheels are also directly connected with a bar, so the wheels must turn together instead of being able to turn independently. When the tracks makes a corner, the outside rail is longer than the inside rail so the outside wheel runs higher on the wider part of the cone and the inside wheel runs lower on the smaller side of the cone. The tightness of the turns in a track are always wide enough that as the outside wheel rides up on the track, it’s flange doesn’t need to hit the side of the rail.
Latest Answers