Bogie Wagon
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A bogie bolster wagon is a British railway term for a wagon designed to carry long thin cargoes such as timber or rails and other steel sections. The sides and ends are minimal and there is no roof. The load is carried longitudinally and borne by three or more bolsters (half baulks of timber) fixed transversely. The load is constrained sideways by movable metal stanchions fitted into the ends of the bolsters, and secured with
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shackle A shackle (or shacklebolt), also known as a gyve, is a U-shaped piece of metal secured with a clevis pin or Bolt (fastener), bolt across the opening, or a hinged metal loop secured with a quick-release locking pin mechanism. The term also appl ...
s.


Design

A bogie bolster has both
bogie A bogie ( ) (or truck in North American English) comprises two or more Wheelset (rail transport), wheelsets (two Railroad wheel, wheels on an axle), in a frame, attached under a vehicle by a pivot. Bogies take various forms in various modes ...
s and bolsters. Bogies are four-wheeled, articulated carriages beneath the main load bed. They allow a long wagon to carry long loads, but still have individually short wheelbases, and so go round tight curves. Bolsters are baulks of
timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...
fixed across the bed. The bed is thus not flat, but most loads such as
girder A girder () is a Beam (structure), beam used in construction. It is the main horizontal support of a structure which supports smaller beams. Girders often have an I-beam cross section composed of two load-bearing ''flanges'' separated by a sta ...
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rails Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters * Railway track or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' (1967 fi ...
, timber lengths,
signal A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...
posts etc. are stiff enough that they only need to be supported at intervals, not continuously across a flat planked bed. The space between baulks allows room for tie-down chains or lifting straps, making the bolster design easier to work with than a completely flat bed. Bolsters could be fixed in place, or be removable. Some had as many as five bolsters. Some designs had multiple sockets and a pair of bolsters could be moved between them. The bolsters could even be allowed to swivel around a central locating pin, and curved steel rubbing strips on the wagon deck. The design of bogie bolster wagons had developed from earlier timber wagons, which were short four-wheeled wagons, each carrying a single swivelling bolster. A pair of such wagons could carry a large tree trunk to a sawmill, but they required either the tree to take the full tension of the train, or a suitable number of match wagons to be marshalled between the two bolster wagons. The long, but relatively lightweight, bogie bolster replaced that arrangement with a single wagon. Most designs also had "stakes", which are removable vertical steel bars to restrain a load from rolling or sliding sideways. They could be either fixed through the bolsters, or inserted into pockets along the edge girders of the wagon body. Bolster wagons are relatively lightweight. Heavier well wagons, used for machinery loads, had deeper and stronger side girders. They had a cranked side profile, so that the
centre of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the barycenter or balance point) is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For a ...
was of the load was lower. Bogie bolsters could carry typical loads of . The GWR telegraphic code word for a bogie bolster was 'Macaw'. Other codes for specific types were 'Beaver' or 'Gane'.


Rail wagons

Bogie bolsters were particularly useful for permanent way loads, such as rail. Many such wagons were not part of the railway's commercial stock, but were included as part of departmental stock (stock used for engineering works on the railway itself). Codes for these wagons included 'Salmon', Bobol and 'Gane' A number of bogie bolsters have been preserved on British heritage railways, as they are convenient for moving rails, telegraph poles and other
permanent way Railway track ( and International Union of Railways, UIC terminology) or railroad track (), also known as permanent way () or "P way" ( and English in the Commonwealth of Nations#Indian subcontinent, Indian English), is the structure on a Ra ...
loads.


See also

* Skeleton car (US) * Truck bolster


References

{{Freight cars Freight rolling stock