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  • 9/25/2024
Unknown and Interesting Facts about Railway track

This is why train wheels are not perfectly cylindrical, but slightly conical. interesting Engineering.

Category

🤖
Tech
Transcript
00:00The design of train wheels is genius.
00:03If we have a train track with a slight curve, and we try to roll some basic wheels across it, we'll simply derail.
00:10Okay, you might say, it's an easy fix. You could just add a flange so it doesn't derail.
00:16And while the flange does keep it from derailing, it can't really navigate a turn.
00:21This is an exaggerated version of train wheels, and of course you can see the wheels are shaped like cones.
00:28The wheels basically self-align.
00:30When the train approaches a curve, the wheels want to continue going straight.
00:35You can see we're on the small portion of this wheel, and the big portion of this wheel.
00:39Because the right wheel is smaller than the left wheel, it turns to the right.
00:43If the right wheel is bigger than the left wheel, it'll turn to the left.
00:46So what makes this design so genius?
00:49It's the fact that when the wheels want to go straight, one wheel becomes a larger wheel,
00:54and one wheel becomes a smaller wheel, forcing the wheels to automatically turn.

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