 Quote by russ_watters
My guess would be that the axle is solid so at least one of the wheels has to be slipping since the outer and inner tracks are different lengths.
|
This is actually taken into account. The wheels of a train are conical. When the truck (set of wheels) goes around a curved section of track, it moves outwards. This shifts the contact on the
outer wheel to a
larger diameter part of the wheel, while the contact on the
inner wheel is moved to a
smaller diameter.
See here.
The fact that the wheels are conical is also what keeps the wheels on the rails, not, as seems intuitive, the flanges. The flanges are only a last resort.
And to answer the OP's question: It is the occasional contact of these flanges - due to incorrect geometry, poor maintenance or wrong speed - that causes the scraping noise.
Similar discussions for: train wheels
