Can you build an engine without round wheels? - "Onward"

[@TrainFactGuy]

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin', Rollin' Rollin' Rollin', Rollin' Rollin' Rollin', Rollin' Rollin' Rollin', RAW-IIIIIIIIIIIIRON

[@deptusmechanikus7362]

_They see me rollin'..._

[@yeoldeseawitch]

Ride em in WROUGHT IIIIIIRON WROUGHT IRON!

[@DennisLora2001]

Nice work man I really like it

[@billygames9161]

Haaaa

[@zingxiu6123]

BOWLING!

[@thomasawl]

The ‘Well theres your problem’ podcast correctly pointed out that this would have sounded HORRENDOUS at speed.

[@SynchroScore]

As an old-fashioned machinist, I'm thinking of how milling those treads would be a huge pain. Granted, it's a simple enough concept, setting the wheel on a rotary table and indexing it, then shaving off each flat, but we must remember that milling machines back then were rather primitive compared to more modern manual equipment, and they didn't chose a number of sides that could be easily divided into 360°.

[@joelfenner]

The total material removal from each face wouldn't be that bad (if each one is only 1" wide). From a turned blank, it'd take a little time, sure. Indexing peculiar numbers of faces would be a bigger pain, but if you had a decent dividing head, and you did it directly from an indexing plate (like older clock gear cutters used) for the specific face count... yes, it would be big, but I've seen pre-1900 gear cutting for power transmission, like hydro plants, and its doable. Given that this was done in the later 1880s, I'm skeptical of it being milled. Horizontal milling machine maybe, but setting up a wheel like this would be miserable, since you'd need a large machine, and you'd be moving the wheel on each cut. Something like an adaptation of a shaper, though....since you'd only be moving the cutter. Surviving film footage of the Westinghouse factory is sparse on milling machines and heavy on planers and shapers.

[@SynchroScore]

@@joelfenner Didn't think of a gear cutter, that would actually make more sense. Especially since they mostly only had straight-tooth gears at that time, a shaper or slotter would be used. Milling machines didn't become more common until milling cutters became cheaper and easier to produce. Actually, I'm a volunteer at the Illinois Railway Museum and we have received a machine that could do a similar job, a Pratt & Whitney slotter. US Government surplus, with DRO fitted, and it has a table that can both shift on two axes and rotate. Haven't set it up yet, but it could interesting to use.

[@AnimalsVehiclesAndMore]

History in the Dark said that the fact that Onward's wheels were polygonal actually made the rail adhesion problem worse. He also said that the wheels caused immense vibrations that, in his own words, "made ride quality just hideous." However, in a very creative sense of humor, HITD included, right when he first mentioned Swinerton's idea for polygonal wheels, a picture of the square-wheeled toy train from the Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special for a comparison. Needless to say, it fits very well.

[@TheMrbigtires]

I wouldn't listen to anything he says after his absolutely false information about the Mason Bogie.

[@AnimalsVehiclesAndMore]

@@TheMrbigtires You dare to roast one of my most favorite KZbinrs like that? He's a really nice guy, and he always corrected, and corrects, himself from mistakes he made in the past, and I don't ever remember him saying anything like that about the Mason Bogie Locomotives.

[@Garrett_Thompson]

​​@@AnimalsVehiclesAndMore ToT links his cited sources, HitD doesn't.

[@HenryHahnsRifle]

I've watched history in the dark and blocked him from my feed. He's a complete idiot. I don't believe at all that this wheel design is beneficial in any way

[@TheMrbigtires]

@AnimalsVehiclesAndMore : kzbin.info/www/bejne/rabWgKKje8h5g6c While he does give some praise, he also heel-turns very quickly and rails into their smaller fuel capacity and leakiness. While this may have been true of VERY early Masons, the railroads that bought and used multiple of them (DSP&P, BRB&L) found them to be more than sufficient. Able to take rough track at higher speeds and running "like a swiss watch". The BRB&L even went so far as to continue ordering Mason-alikes from Baldwin into the 20s because Mason works closed and they found the design perfect for their needs. Also unlike HitD I can site my sources, "Mason Steam Locomotives" by Arthur Wallace and "Denver South Park & Pacific: Memorial Edition" by M.C. Poor

[@riccardodipietro4362]

I want to make a clarification on why steel wheels have low rolling resistance. It's not because steel on steel has low resistance. That's because in normal operation the wheels don't slip, and friction without slippage does not dissipate energy. What dissipate energy in a wheel is the fact that at any point in time it is deformed to have a contact area with the ground. As the wheel rolls, it is constantly deforming according to where the contact point moves. It's this deformation that causes energy to be dissipated (by "friction" at a molecular/atomic level). Steel wheels are much more rigid than rubber ones, so they deform less and dissipate less energy

[@amandahugankiss4110]

i have perfect rigidity and therefore i dissipate no energy whatsoever. this is why i can fuck all night long. thanks physics!

[@telhudson863]

Myth-Busters fitted square wheels to a truck. The ride was good once the truck got up to speed. So a 200-gon wheel would be fine. Of course once you are going at speed the wheel would spend a lot of time not fully in contact with the rail as it goes from corner to corner.

[@AbbeyYard]

'I'm old square wheels!'

[@Yamauma-No.10]

Could this be fixed by making each side curved/scalloped rather than straight in profile?

[@telhudson863]

@@Yamauma-No.10Yes but that would be saying that flat sides don't work. If you are going to change the profile, you might just as well use perfectly round wheels.

[@asteroidrules]

There's a reason "don't reinvent the wheel" is a saying. Also it's purely coincidence but "Onward" was the name of the first Mason Bogie locomotive, an 0-4-4RT built in 1872, I guess it's a good name for a locomotive. Unlike this Onward, Mason's Onward was quite successful, and the Mason Bogie design enjoyed a brief heyday with 148 being made over the course of 18 years, and the locomotives being regarded as powerful and good on tight curves and rough track, but temperamental and maintenance intensive.

[@frenchfriar]

What a multi-faceted design.

[@templar_1138]

The maintenance issue is the first thing I thought of. It reminds me of why standard serrated knives dull over time without the possibility of being re-sharpened.

[@kenbrown2808]

@@Skibidoop-originalor sharpen the flat side and debur the serrated side.

[@TubsOnWheels101]

FINALLY I FIND SOMETHING ON THIS LOCOMOTIVE! THE RAILROAD THAT IT WORKED ON PASSES BY NEAR WHERE I LIVE!

[@HALLish-jl5mo]

Friction, and thereby traction, is completely independent of contact area. f=uN Friction=coefficient of friction x normal force. Note the complete lack of contact area in that equation. I expect the actual reason for the performance improvement was that it defirmed the rails very slightly, forming a very subtle rack and pinion.

[@caramelldansen2204]

Now that's a FuN fact! 😅

[@NKP723]

@@caramelldansen2204booooo

[@SkorjOlafsen]

That's a great equation for spherical cows in a vacuum, but in the real world the size and shape of the contact patch matters. This is (part of) why locomotives needed more driven wheels as they grew in power, why race cars use slicks when they can, and part of why tanks and bulldozers use treads. The reality is quite complicated for rail, as the pressure varies non-linearly across the contact patch, the contact patch is (usually) partially adhering and partially slipping, and the size of the adhering patch matters a great deal.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@SkorjOlafsen You're mixing up pressure and friction, and also not understanding the formula. The reason why trains had multiple driving wheels is very much because of this formula, the normal force would be experienced by each wheel seperately so if you just increased power to a single axle eventually the force would overcome the friction and the wheel would slip. However if you divide the power out over multiple wheels each wheel won't have enough force to overcome friction and you avoid wheelslip. Tank treads are an entirely different matter that have nothing to do with friction, the point of tank treads is to spread the weight of the vehicle out over as large an area as possible in order to provide floatation.

[@SkorjOlafsen]

@@hedgehog3180Think it through. Two drive axels means half the normal force on each, and half the driving force on each. A larger contact patch spreads out both the normal force and the driving force. And yet it matters. It matters because f = uN is a "spherical cow" simplification, the place where understanding should begin, not end. A real wheel-on-rail is complex, with the front part of the contact sticking and the rear part slipping, and the breakpoint changing with driving force and material. The coeficient of friction averaged across the contact is not a constant, it varies with driving force and, yes, the length of the contact patch. It gets even more complex when there's a third material, such as sand or a leaf, between the two, as the CoF is highly variable. When part of the wheel is slipping and part is not, it's about avoiding _all_ of it slipping. A larger contact patch can help with that, though there are trade-offs with everything.

[@justandy333]

I would imagine the wear on the rails would be pretty extreme as well, especially during a wheelslip.

[@TrainBoi227]

They did it in Kalimari Desert back in 1997 and goddamnit I'm gonna do it too

[@WillowLikesTrainz2024]

I personally am the driver of the Kalimari Express

[@RedJubilee]

Good one lol

[@t0biascze644]

the wheels in kalamari desert were squares tho

[@LNER162]

Classic track! 👍🏻

[@neilbain8736]

Brakes- have a separate brake drum or disc like vehicles today. Bicycles have had elliptical chainrings. This has been tried about three times. Firstly in the 30's and then again in the late 80's by both Shimano and Chris Bell who each had the major and minor axis at right angles to each other. This is all quite another wormhole.

[@suzi_mai]

I had a bicycle with those. I really couldn't tell if they increased pedal force, but they made shifting worse.

[@neilbain8736]

@@suzi_mai I think they were also bad for the knees.

[@hedgehog3180]

I mean where exactly would you put that on a steam locomotive? Also it'd just be a waste of weight when like the directly applied brake works perfectly fine already.

[@brenlc1412]

“I’m Old Polygon Wheels!” Fumed Onward.

[@garryferrington811]

"Onward" also seems to have had a Belpaire firebox (very popular in Britain) so apparently Swinnerton was trying everything.

[@peters1127]

Thank you for another very informative "Train of Thought"

[@SheepInACart]

For people wondering why we don't use this on modern freight trains, the modern iteration is tread patterns cut into wheels, but it doesn't make financial sense. The reason is physics, power equals torque by revolution speed, and wheels slip when they exceed a given torque, which cutting patterns aims to slightly increase. Since the trains engine has a limited amount of power output, and the locomotive a fixed weight, under any given set of weather/track conditions there is a critical speed where its engine is already able to be fully utilized, and so no improvement can be had by better wheels. Likewise when moving below this threshold, you still only get advantage when you actually want to use more power than would otherwise cause a slip, like steep hills or rapid acceleration. However the cost of tread patterns due to increased rolling resistance, wear of rails and shorter life or higher replacement/re-maching expenses is applied constantly for distance traveled, not only when it gives advantages. If you where prepared to pay the extra running costs of higher traction wheels to lay down more power, you could just add another locomotive onto the train instead. It could make sense for very lightweight regularly stopping services, but rubber wheels fill that neiche better and ARE in use by some metro trains in europe, as well as city busses everywhere.

[@420sakura1]

Plus sand is cheap.

[@hedgehog3180]

Wheel slip also basically isn't a problem with modern transmissions.

[@420sakura1]

@@hedgehog3180 East Palestine, USA likes to know your location

[@ajkleipass]

The braking issue is easily solved with a circular surface to brake against in parallel to the polygonal tire. As for its effectiveness, a 4-2-2 is an odd bird to test it on. I would have liked to see data on its effectiveness with a 2-6-0 or 4-6-0. The idea was to get more driver surface to the rail, so go big on the number of drivers as well as the surface area per wheel.

[@lyokianhitchhiker]

I think he was trying to emphasize the effectiveness of the wheel shape, hence the single powered axle.

[@strcmdrbookwyrm]

Interesting. I never really gave an idea like this more than a surface level examination before, and the idea does make sense. However, halfway through the video I did correctly guess that wear and tear would be a big issue. It's funny, because wear would probably eventually make the wheel round again.

[@MatthewsBranchLine]

Now I know why he was asking that question in the Discord server. Fascinating.

[@charl6335]

From the Boston area, Lowell is pronounced the same as you would read lol

[@1_railfan]

Wow, that was a real geometrical alternative for sanders.

[@TheStickCollector]

I feel like if you built the rails with the appropriate groves, then it could work but be much more expensive. It is probably just easier to make rounded wheels than any marginal gains otherwise

[@richardsweeney197]

Great video, just one thing, Lowell, MA. Is pronounced like it is one syllable Lowell, not Low-ell. Trust me, it's my home town.

[@SmartassX1]

Surely this would also have warn out the tracks much faster.

[@allangibson8494]

You can turn polygons on lathes . The technology is actually quite old and means any shape with more than three sides can be machined. Holtzapffel lathes are the best known but any conventional lathe can be modified with motorised geared cutters to do the job. These are used for jobs like cutting hex heads on cap screws and gear teeth for example.

[@Austriantrainguy]

Show us the Engerth-Locomotives

[@bowlinerailfan]

At least this locomotive's unpopularity wasn't for being a "square". ( In America culture, being called a square was another way of saying someone or something was uncool.)

[@ChimpyWallah]

The brackets kind of ruin the joke…

[@kenbrown2808]

seems to me it would spend more time with less contact patch than a round wheel, than it spent with more. although 200 facets is pretty close to round, so it might be the corners of the cuts that were improving traction, kind of like the edges of the lugs on ice traction tires are what gives the traction.

[@SheepInACart]

Its important to note the smooth running, at the weight on the driving wheel the wheels hub was not rising and falling during normal motion because the deformation of the wheel and rail was more than the height difference between center of flat to hub vs tip of point to hub. I suspect the actual contact area changed little during the rotation, nor compared to a round wheel, because the materials just deform till the pressure is equal. Instead the keying effect on the edges of the lugs you mention is likely the cause of any increased tractive effort claimed, as even if the area is the same if the lugs are projecting further into the rail then it will take more force to slip them (but also embody far more rolling resistance and wear).

[@lukechristmas3951]

And I thought wheels made of paper were a crazy idea. It's still amazing to see how such an idea came into a reality, even if it didn't last long.

[@alicehodges9964]

Ì Like Railways Thay Are Amazing And Steam Engines Look Awesome I Think It's Good To See Locomotives

[@andypughtube]

I don't get it. As the wheel rotates, you wil linstantaneously have the flat resting on the rail. But the rest of the time you are on the point to a greater or lesser extent. So on average the contact area is less. Fot those who say that the force fo friction is independednt of area, then that is so in theory, but you also have to consider whether the area in contact has the shear strength to transmit the force. Which is why high-powered cars and bikes need wider wheels. (despite it having soe downsids for handling in the case of a motorcycle)

[@hedgehog3180]

I doubt the average contact area is less. Seems like to me that would only be true if a polygon of the same diameter as a circle had a smaller circumference but that is very much not the case.

[@David_Mattox]

Put it in ‘O’, for ‘Onward’!!

[@FoxDog1080]

This sounds great for climbing hills

[@anne_the_dev]

Cool video ❤

[@benmoore2253]

I would’ve thought it a better idea to have several pegs poking out of the wheel, and a set of rails with several holes. This would be a terrible idea as I often don’t think things through

[@G-Cole-01]

that's pretty much what a rack-and-pinion railway does; it's just that they're usually used for steep inclines and are normally used in addition to normal wheels rather than in replacement of them.

[@kkobayashi1]

Some of the earliest steam locomotives had cogged wheels like you describe, until they realized it wasn't necessary. Like Richard Trevithick's locomotive.

[@ramdom_player201]

What if someone tried to fit caterpillar treads to a train? Also, cog railways.

[@FuelFire]

The fact that they actually thought this would be a good idea is so hilarious

[@woodrubber4538]

I'm surprised you didn't put the fighting polygon team theme somewhere in this.

[@markblewden6188]

That’s Facetnating!

[@littlehelphere]

Where can I go foe break down on steam locomotive parts?

[@deptusmechanikus7362]

They just wanted to save processing power on rendering more complex model

[@KlaxontheImpailr]

Fun Fact: there are logging vehicles that use polygonal wheels to aid in traction.

[@jamesgroccia644]

1:55 It's "LOW-ull"

[@ImmortalAbsol]

There was me thinking they chose the wheel configuration *because* it was known for poor traction.

[@lyokianhitchhiker]

I was thinking the same thing

[@ChimpManZ1264]

Silver lining is "Now we know!“

[@VictorTanzig1]

So this is what happens when you try to reinvent the wheel?

[@NitroIndigo]

"He called me old square wheels!"

[@SynchroScore]

Rusty red scrap iron!

[@ThefriendyDiesel]

I wonder if theres a piece of rolling stock that can have a driver-

[@offrails]

The design might have worked better if the rail had been shaped to work with it...but then you would just have a rack railway.

[@andrewmazzarini2742]

1:54 "Lowell" is pronounced "Low-ull", with the emphasis on the first syllable. Most locals slur the two syllables into one, giving us something that sounds like "Lowl"

[@caesar_cider2777]

3:28 this issue could be remedied by having a separate brake disk on the inside of the frames, and while more complex would keep the increased traction without most of the compatibility problems with regular brakes

[@hedgehog3180]

Then you need the wheel to be made of solid steel.

[@bl7355]

I am pretty sure Triang did a similar thing in OO gauge.

[@tooleyheadbang4239]

I had forgotten about that. It had a name, like 'magnadesion', but not.

[@bl7355]

@@tooleyheadbang4239 I do remember that they sometimes sparked on the track ⚡️

[@alicehodges9964]

The Steam Engine Looks Awesome

[@ljosephdumas3113]

I would think the 'points' of each side of the polygon would gouge the track, similar to how wheels with flat spots do, as discussed in below: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b53bhJyHaq6FZqssi=5M6lJTAPBccl8yVw

[@traintimeboy]

I used this in an English project once

[@gabetrain8834]

Dude took the square wheel thing to a whole new level

[@SeverityOne]

There's a proverb about reinventing the wheel...

[@LemartesLogistics]

Wouldn't it have ran on the tips more than the flats giving it a smaller area giving bite on the rail instead?

[@HOWNDOG66]

The brake issue is easily solved be machining flat faces on inside and outside of wheel and using a calliper.

[@germansteamlocomotive]

I KNEW IT

[@nityking1]

I'm Old Square-Wheels!

[@ptorq]

Between Boston and WHERE? A lot of place names in Massachusetts are pronounced "oddly" (i.e. more like the British places they're named after), but Lowell is LOUL/LOW-ul, just like a naive Midwesterner would expect. (I was a naive Midwesterner, and I lived 5 miles from there for 3 years; everybody found my attempts at "Peabody" and "Leominster" hilarious, but nobody ever corrected my pronunciation of Lowell.)

[@Jayhsia1215]

She reminds me Emily

[@thatairplaneguy]

Oh the pun

[@Dodge_RAM_1500_fan]

What is the thumbnail that is a weird train I have ever seen

[@Rebel9668]

So, instead of putting the friction brake against the wheel, put it against the axle...or even cast a polygonal wheel with a smaller inner or outer round disc for braking against. Or brake against the sides of the tire itself like a modern set of disc brake caliper pads do. If you're going to spend the money to experiment anyways, why not?

[@SheepInACart]

To be fair, you can also just have a convex rather than concave brake pad, the reason why we don't see the problem solved is it just didn't matter for a 4-2-2+tender where less than one quarter of the locomotive+tender weight was on the polygonal driving wheels, counter stream braking could be applied to that axle, and the entire train following had automatic air brakes. It would have mattered for a street car, but lots of those use external brakes (like drum or disk style you'd find on modern car or truck) rather than just wheel brake blocks anyway, since there stop start routes and inter-operation with other traffic causes a LOT of brake applications and demands more consistent braking rates for a given driver control input.

[@hedgehog3180]

Breaking against the axle seems like a horrible idea that's just bound to cause a horrific accident.

[@Rebel9668]

@@hedgehog3180 Not if you mold the axle with a thicker section made to brake against. Or it could be a collar for the axle with a large keyway to hold it in place. In either even, it could be changed out at the same time the tires were. Personally I think I'd favor trying the caliper/pad method myself though as they've proven themselves over brake shoes in cars for years now.

[@hawkerhellfire9152]

Canadian South Park logic?

[@Duck64906]

Single drive wheels

[@TankEngineMedia]

Guess the only way Onward went was downward in terms of versatility

[@joshryan5890]

they literally tried to reinvent the wheel

[@fhwolthuis]

April Fools came early?😂

[@Weird...101]

With the braking issue, just use a disc brake, not a drum style brake, they knew of that at the time, so i think the mention of this is unneccecary

[@laurencefraser]

pretty sure the drum style brake would have been standard on engines at the time though, so the issue with the brakes isn't that it's impossible, just impractical by way of requiring yet more non-standard parts.

[@Paulftate]

toot-toot

[@ConorDaRobin]

train 64

[@VintageJunior]

Great, pre-fab flat spots!

[@harrisonallen651]

Halted

[@mnmountainman9343]

I'm 💀🤔

[@Lynx_Gamlng]

Yo 2.0

[@PowerPuppet]

Yo

[@ozloon2000]

hope the fillings in your teeth are good

[@viquezug3936]

??