Making trains run more smoothly is only one of the missions of Progress Rail Services and its 27 operations throughout North America. Fitting the wheels onto axles is another matter, especially when the tonnage required to force the wheels securely onto the axles is somewhere between 90 and 160 tons.
Therefore, high precision in measuring wheel bore diameters during machining so that the wheels can be fitted perfectly to an axle is critical to the successful and smooth performance of train wheels. According to Mike Russell, quality assurance manager at Progress Rail’s plant in Jackson, SC, comparing the new and old ways of measuring bore diameters has shown a 10-fold increase in accuracy with the newest instrument recently acquired by the company.