Improving Axle Reliability in North American Freight Service

This paper reviews several areas of focus for improving axle reliability in North American Freight Car Service. These include many different methods of achieving improvements including exploration of enhanced axle materials and revision of current material requirements to improve the fatigue strength of axles. A second method discussed is the strengthening of requirements for repairing axle fillet damage to improve safety in operation of second hand axles. The final area discussed in this paper is prevention of axle journal fillet damage through the utilization of corrosion preventative coatings and requiring fitted journal bearing applications.