Steam Locomotive Wheel Lathe

If anyone has some ideas on finding an 80" or bigger wheel lathe please PM me. Seems to be 64" is the biggest I can find. Thank-you.

Hi,

You might try e-mailing the Strasburg RR people. As I remember it, they were capable of doing such things. And of course, also ask if they can't, do they know who does. You need to network for an answer at that point.

Thanks I'll contact them. As a note...we are trying to find a lathe to purchase.

We only have smaller drivers on our locos (Zig Zag Railway in Lithgow Australia) but we wound up buying a non-railway lathe for our wheel turning. It used to be a propeller shaft lathe, and it came from a shipyard in Singapore...you may have to look in places you wouldn't have thought could provide such a piece of equipment, and adapt it to your needs. Best of luck.

Mick

If I remember correct, didn't Strasburg build a railmounted lathe set-up?

The operation method was to drop the conn rods, jack up the locomotive, and insert rollers under the wheel to be turned. then they made an adapter to connect the wheel to a slow motor, and that is how it was done.

It may have been another Steam Railroad Museum, but I remember a link from either RR.net (not sure which generation) or RYPN.org.

Regards,

Rich C

Well, here at darmstadt kranichstein in Germany is a lathe for wheels in diameter 90.5 inches, and also in the famous locomotive shop at Meiningen there is a lathe for those large wheels....