Why luxury train carriages had wheels made of actual paper - Allen Paper Wheels
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- Опубліковано 11 тра 2023
- In Today's video, we take a look at Allen's paper wheels; wheels made for railroad cars that were made of literal, actual paper
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For my next trick, a boiler made out of potting clay
How about a wooden firebox?
coincidentally some potters wheels have infinitely variable drives consisting of two cones one made from steel the other paper one cone rolls aginst the other changing the contatact patch and thus the gear ratio - i belive the paper cone is for traction against the steel
@@deptusmechanikus7362 A wax dome?
Make it a oil burner to
@@deptusmechanikus7362 osium pistons?
Talking about putting wheels on passenger trains: In Germany we tried putting tram wheels, which are partly rubber, on high speed trains which lead to the worst accident in German high speed history, the Eschede crash. It’s worth checking the story out
The crash was caused by the wheels being used for far longer than they should have been.
Not exactly tram wheels, but the technology that went into making them quieter and more comfortable was used on the ICE train but without frequent inspection and maintence, the steel tires would come off the rubber inserts like we saw with Eschede.
@@nekomasteryoutube3232 the technology came from tram wheels
@@schwarzerritter5724 Usually cracks in the wheels start outside and grow in. Noone expected the cracks to start inside.
I included eschede in a powerpoint about trains I did back in elementary... I'll never forget that story.
Paper bonded together with glue would have been an early version of the lightweight composites we use today. I wonder how these wheels normally failed, was delamination a problem?
adding glue would make these pretty good
The tread or rims of the wheels would work harden from flexing and eventually crack. These cracks would get worse until it tossed a chunk off.
The train disaster in Germany was a perfect example of this failure.
I am a locomotive composite mechanic and have studied the subject of trains most of my life.
An excellent book that goes into some great amount of detail on this subject is The American Railway Passenger Car by White. I don’t remember his first name. The book is known among the passenger car enthusiasts as the Passenger Car Bible or the Varnish Bible.
@@ryandavis7593
That answers my question. My 1st thought was that it was not the paper that failed but rather the tyre which cracked.
Interesing note. In Jules Vern's book "Master of the world" the airship is made out of paper glued together and then put under high pressure press.
@@allenshepard7992 The balloons used by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII to fire-bomb the west coast of the US were also made of paper. Rice paper to be exact. Some 20 years ago I met the last living Japanese engineer who was a member of the design team on that project. Interesting fellow.
Okay, that's actually really neat. Kinda sad that they were just deemed "unsafe" overall, because from what it sounds like they worked perfectly well for the loads of the era, provided they were used within their known limitations.
The problem is that as technology improved, those limitations became unworkable. They had to be deemed unsafe overall because they no longer had any safe practical applications.
@@spencers5898 mostly correct, early power take off didn't always have shielding either. It wasn't until the mid '90's that roll over cages became universal on new tractor's. I dare say there are many old tractors that still don't have roll over cages, if it's still useful, why get a new one?
There was a time where most all Farmers fixed their own equipment. Farmers still want to work on their equipment ' cause the Dealership always had other folks equipment already waiting for work.
Planting or harvest, you can't wait, even if you're old tractor didn't have all the safety features, if you could still use it to plant or harvest, well what is the clear choice. Lots of Ford 9N and 8N tractors running still around, when one gets on the market they sell at a premium, those old Ford's are still useful.
This doesn't address the way manufacturers have made it such that you are forced to buy factory parts.
By the way, no antagonism intended. I hope that I've conveyed a frustration with Big Agriculture, rather than at any individual.
I mean the problem is that said loads were only possible if the design of the car was unsafe, and even so they were still less durable than metal wheels.
@@nilo9456 Because wheels are under a load all the time while in service, and they aren't specific to the machine and changed out and conceivably moved to a much larger car. ROPS is under load how often during normal use? And can I move the ROPS from my new tractor over to my old 8N? How often do you change the ROPS due to normal wear?
I think you've been kicked in the head once too often. You make no sense and can't even stay on topic. An individual farmer has nothing to do with a railroad...
What if it rained
I grew up around trains and knew about these. I was told the Pullman Sleeper Cars with the paper wheels were the best and quietest around, even after they got suspension. Laminated paper is still used today to make a lot of things, mostly Skate Boards around here.
Never would've thought such an idea could work so well. Impressive
There was a car with a paper transmission as well. It used a paper disk as a friction material in what was essentially an early CVT. The engine was connected to a big metal disk, and the paper disk could slide across the surface of that big metal disc so that depending on how close it was to the center or the outside, it would spin at different speeds. And if it crossed to the other side, that was reverse. There's a Jason Drives video about it, it's pretty interesting.
Some riding mowers have been using that exact drive system with a rubber friction disk instead of a paper one for over 60 years. Most rear engine riding mowers used disk drives and I've seen a Snapper lawn tractor that also had a disk drive in it. They're also adjustable, so you can have a potentially infinite number of gears.
I own 4 rear engine riding mowers; two Snappers, a 1967 Hi-Vac and a 1998 SR1230, a 1984 John Deere R72, and a 1994 Ariens RM830e, and all are disk drive except the John Deere, which has an actual 5-speed transmission under the seat.
That _sounds_ weird as heck
@@roadwarrior114 Most walk-behind snow blowers use that type of transmission as well.
@@andrewalexander9492 I've got a 1980s snowblower that I want to put a little seat trailer on the back of to make it an articulated ride-on snowblower.
Sounds like the precursor to those MTD made snow blower drives, it's essentially a moveable ring gear, in a way....a very clever device. Allows for a "transmission" on machinery
It was crazy on paper because it was paper.
Yup
It was crazy on paper, but wasn't crazy in paper
This is what I love about UA-cam. If you've curious enough and open enough, you can learn something new every day.
Never would've I had thought someone had the bright idea of mixing papers and wheels together
Compressed and dried paper is just wood, after all.
The fact that this worked as essentially paper suspension blows my mind.
I love how "quiet" your video titles are compared to other UA-camrs.
Also he says everything that needs to be said in five minutes, no waffle.
N'yes QUIET
The word you are looking for is the opposite of clickbait, so “non-clickbait”.
@@marioxerxescastelancastro8019 Something like that yeah
I've seen paper airplanes, paper boats, but paper wheels for rolling stock? That's a new one! Guess you could say Allen was on a "Roll". Sorry. I thought about another potential flaw with the paper wheels...what if it was raining or snowing? The paper material would pretty much get all soggy.
Another fascinating video sir!
🥁
I think that rain and snow would have minimal effect on the wheels, at least in the short term. From my experiences with wet books, I've found that the way the pages tend to get soggy is from the outside in, with the centers of each page only really being effected if you left it to get soaked completely. So what I think happens is that water gets inside a book by squeezing between each page. I think that with these wheels the compression of the pages and the iron rims of the wheels only "top" and "bottom" sheets of each wheel would actually be exposed. It would take a lot longer for the water to seep through the page, so the inner papers would be protected. I guess some of the outer layers might get crinkly and brittle once they were dry, but the rest would be pretty dry.
Not sure though, could be a good experiment to try.
TL,DR: I think the way the pages were compressed and how they were oriented in the wheel helped protect them form getting soaked through by rain and snow.
@@strcmdrbookwyrm That does sound logical, thanks!
I'd imagine they were painted or shellacked on the outside..
@@ryanjohnson3615or some type of resin, epoxy, oil etc could have been used to impregnate the paper.
Also we have a limited idea of what “paper” is.
Some industrial rolls or various things are spun onto cardboard cores, just like paper towel rolls, but that core is HARD!
As a kid I made “robot arms” out of some rolls, while playing robot with another goofy kid, we were both 6.
I klonked him on top of the head, as a robot does, and he screamed bloody murder, the hollow sound from both his head and that hard paper roll was hilarious!
But he returned fire, it came down and bounced of my forehead and the bridge of my nose… I thought I died!
No joke, knocked me out just a few minutes, my mom came and got me after that and determined my nose was broken… the doctor said it looked more like I was in a car wreck and hit my head on the dash or windshield… or maybe like it been hit by a baseball bat across the eyes…
Also the hydraulic press channel can show just how hard paper can be
I was totally expecting this to be a "and then they tried using the wheels but they kept catching on fire and were only used a few times" kind of situation -
But now I am positively baffled I had no idea these were used so pervasively.
You can do astonishing things with paper these days. The frame of IKEA's Expedit/Kallax shelvings are basically paper on the inside, hardly any wood, and they are quite sturdy.
"You can do astonishing things with paper these days. The frame of IKEA's Expedit/Kallax shelvings are basically paper on the inside, hardly any wood"
Isn't paper processed wood?
@@jwalker7567 That's an ignorant statement. Good quality paper-resin composites can be made to be waterproof, strong and durable (E.g. Richlite). All-around better than wood, not cheaper, and absolutely not lighter.
They're often used to meet fire and chemical safety requirements, e.g. replacing marble countertops in laboratories or to furnish airplanes, and like Micarta they were often used to make gears back in the first half of the 20th century.
Virtually no densified wood fibre board is lighter than wood, since they're made from compressed wood fibres. Those IKEA boards are lighter because they're not at all anything like MDF, Richlite, or any other similar materials, they're sandwich panels with a resin-bound cardboard honeycomb core, mimicking the composite techniques used to build things like airplane. They're light because most of the volume of the board is air (Ironically, similarly to wood). Sandwich panels won't have durability issues if the surface plies are made from quality materials (waterproof). That can even be wood.
Much modern furniture is made from garbage like MDF, which should never have be used as a long-term structural material, because that's what most people can afford to pay.
Farm tractors of the 30's, 40's, and 50's had belt pulleys made of paper to power machines like mills and sawmills, and you can still get them for those old tractors.
It really came down to layered strength, a know phenomena for paper in general. Once I understood that's what they where doing in hyper-compressed form, it made sense. But like you point out, that only works if they don't have to deal with excess weight.
I salute this mad man for his paper wheels!
Somewhat later, compressed paper was used for belt drive pulley wheels, particularly as the driving drum on tractor PTO's. It had a higher coefficient of friction than cast iron, which meant that the belts could be run at lower tension, saving wear on bearings and the belt lacings.
Wheels on trams have sometimes a layer of rubber between the outer steel rim and the inner part of the wheel, making them more silent than standard steel wheels.
Unfortunately the wheels on some German high-speed trains used the same method to get rid of the vibrations in the restaurant cars. You may know what happened, the steel rim of such a wheel broke, the broken rim switched a track switch ( point ? ) the train got partly derailed and the derailed part smashed into the pillars of a bridge.
And this lead to a train crash with 101 dead passengers if you are interested look for 'train crash Eschede'
This was probably the first large-scale industrial use of composites. Richard Allen was certainly ahead of his time.
There was opportunity to close with this line:
”Just because something seems crazy on paper, doesn't mean it couldn't be made from paper.”
Around 2:04: perfect moment to drop "one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them"
For all lf my reading, I do not recall ever hearing of paper wheels. What an extraordinary fact!! Thank you 👍
Once I saw a strange object at a scrapyard, a cylinder where something like this paper was slowly spilling out due to moisture. I guess it was some sort of dampened roller then.
They used paper pulleys on tractors and equipment for many years. Probably what you saw.
As l understand it there was a lot of cheap Empire style furniture in which the expensive wood carving was replaced with basically molded paper mache in the later 1880s. During WWII the British made drop tanks for aircraft out of paper based material. Save the aluminum gor the airframes, naval bronze and aviation engines.
For a while I was building models out of cardstock and chipboard (the stuff on the back of tablets, cereal boxes etc). I made up a test piece 5 inches square with 5 stringers in both directions. The stringers were 1 inch tall. All the parts were 65 lb cardstock on each side with a layer of chipboard between. Around .05" thick. Held together with PVA glue. Stood up to a 500 lb load. Took an industrial arbor press to collapse it.
Paper based materials can do some amazing things
imagine innovation being done to fill a need
the good ol days
It's fascinating to learn how stuff like this was made
Great video 👍
Im a big fan of anything made of paper, even more when it is something practical.
You have a new subscriber 👌
I would have thought these wheels would have suffered more from heat damage either from bearings or brake blocks.
They probably would have. I think they thought about that though, which is (one of) the reason(s) they put a metal part in the center.
@@strcmdrbookwyrm yeah, but didn't old timey greased axels catch fire on metal weels too? It was one of the reasons to have a "crows nest" on the caboose, if I remember correctly, to look for burning axels. So I wonder if it could actually be a problem. Leaving aside the fact that compressed paper doesn't burn that well.
I know the "crows nest" on the caboose and the "greased axels" have proper names, but I don't know how to spell "cupula" and I'm not sure the name is "hotboxes" respectively, and I don't want to risk a train nerd correcting me.
@@taiyoqun Yeah, but I think by the time your bearings start hotboxing the fact that your wheels are paper is going to be the least of your concerns. But I do think the bearings were in the car rather than the wheels though. I'd have to double check to be sure.
nearly every day as a motorbike courier...
"yknow, a big stack of paper is equivalent to a big chunk of hardwood? its too heavy!"
papers perfect. timber has a grain and it makes it rather... non-uniform. directional.
mash them fibers up, tangle them together, and use lots of layers of them bonded together... preferably with something flexible... and tada, you got pliant yet hardwearing wheels.
paper was and is used still in a lot of areas like that... rolling mills, silent gears, yada yada...
these days they would market these as "renewable green composite material" rather than "paper"
Fascinating. Thank you.
What a little gem of knowledge!
This is papercraft on a whole another level.
I see what you did there, good dad joke at the end. It's actually amazing some of the crazy things they did in the past.
Paper composite is an amazing material. It was particularly loved in the 1700s-1800s for it's noise suppressing ability.
I am surprised they aren't using MFC, the descendant of paperboard composite, in layers with steel to dampen noise in many things. This both strengthens steel and reduces noise.
Why didn't the paper wheel "roll" on -- see what I did there -- under streetcars (trams) and interurbans? Street railway vehicles are much lighter than railroad passenger cars, and the design looks like a good way to reduce squeal on tight curves, of which street railways and interurbans abounded.
Because suspension got better
I've never heard of this! Very interesting!
This is a great video: The title and thumbnail are eye-catching and tell you exactly what to expect, the subject is interesting as a curiosity, and the actual video was kept short, to the point, and information dense.
Well done.
Interesting piece of railroad trivia.
Sounds like a similar concept (and purpose) to the "Dual-Block"wheels that to my understanding are still in use to this day. In that case usually an outer rim and inner hub connected by rubber blocks, but the portion of the wheel that is the rubber blocks is much smaller.
Since he had a knack for marketing, he should have called them, "Paper View Wheels.' People would still be buying them today.
I’ve lived near Morris Illinois for over 50 years and had never heard of this invention until today….thanks for the video.
I am happy my town did something good for the train industry!
Wild, I had never heard of such a thing
Throughout history there have been tons of phenolic composite materials that used paper, linen, canvas, rag etc. Made by many countries and different companies, they're commonly know as micarta. Its still used as electrical insulation. The material circuit boards are made out of are usually micarta. I've seen furniture, all sorts of products and even cannon balls made from micarta. Very strong.
Should have said “one ring to bind them all”! Great video!👍🏻
Great work ToT!
That's a lot like high pressure laminate, it really is a surprisingly strong material
That is very remarkable
There were also paper pulleys for use with flat belts. Paper Pulleys, Inc. from Tennessee still rebulds some models used on tractors.
Just because something works, doesn’t mean it’s not crazy.
What a wacky story and it is amazing that paper wheels where that good and used for that many years.
Paper is made from wood fibers. So this wheel is basically a composite structure made of wood fibers and glue. Not very different from plywood or fiberglass.
I can certainly think of composites which would utilize paper/cellulose laminates that could certainly be useful in a number of metrics. I would imagine they could with modern practices be made much lighter and possibly even have similar robustness to a monolithic metal wheel for certain use cases.
That is really interesting. Thanks for sharing it.
If you’re going to reinvent the wheel, it needs a hub and spoke investigation.
Paper mache is devastatingly strong when you add even just a few more layers than what a pinata uses. It goes suddenly from fragile to almost metal strength. The moment you said the layers were glued, I knew this would do well.
In Jules Vern's book "Master of the world" the airship is made out of paper glued together and then put under high pressure press.
Yes this "composite" material had a place.
In WW2 germans due to metal shortage used curd for making buttons. As a kid I slept in bed with bedsheet having these curd buttons. These buttons were still holding fine more than 50 years after manufacture. Train wheels from paper does not sound too special after that.
You mean Galalith?
Awesome
Well I never! Learn something new every day.
This just reminds us that paper is just wood. But very thin.
XD
In Jules Verne's 'Robour the Conqueror,' the enormous helicopter-airship contraption is built using a similar manner. Verne not only describes the process but even mentions its use in railway carriages, amongst other things.
"just because it sounds crazy on paper, doesn't mean its crazy IN paper...."
1:35 WTF THATS MY HOMETOWN!!! Parts of that paper mill are still there, though it looks a lot different. Its mostly just a warehouse now.
Cool video :) Who would think that some so heavy would drive on paper :)
The Illinois railway museum has an ex Soo Line wood coach that still has a paper wheel set
The way this dude pronounces Allen is mind boggling
Thanks!
My guy invented early day bulletproof kevlar.
So cool
hey nice idea, but ac maglev (alternating magnets on the car with also normal wheels for stand still on a steel/copper rails) would work much nicer, magnetic induction rails
Very insteresting.
Very interesting thank you
I think we all know that he just wanted an excuse to build a 650-ton press.
Interesting.
Great pun!
You can even make armor out of it :D
well, if you compress and glue paper layers hard enough, you get a high grade compound material - it's more of a story like how Trabant had fiber/resin as for a body shell.
In the Death Valley museum, wasting away outside is a perfect example from the 1860's of a infinite disk drive transmission on some mining equipment. Still spins
I remember in the mid-70s the foreign country making brake pads and shoes out of cardboard what a concept. 🤔
4:45 The lesson here is "Just because something sounds crazy *on* paper, doesn't mean it can't be made *from* paper"
Cool beans i never knew that
There is a car at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden Colorado that still rides on it’s original paper wheels.
Which car?
@@BandanRRChannel on the RGS Business car Rico
That;s wheely interesting.
Fascinating. The Germans started using thrir mega presses when starved for rationed materials. I'm sure you know of the famous near indestructible pressed paper wehrmacht uniform buttons (combat fatigues). Canteens and other objects were also trialled in pressed paper. And of course we have papier mache, with many wonderful examples in museums.
They weren't that brief. They fullfilled a niche until something better came along and seem amazingly successful for 30 or so years. 30 years is a long time.
0:11 you can even make armor out of it (if you had shellac and resin to go with it)
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I HAD A PRIVATE ROOM WITH ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR FREE!!
ALSO, DURING THE TRIP, YOU HAVE A CARNIVAL RIDE YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE!!”
"Huh.??.... Just a box".! 😂
Today paper products continue to fill many interesting roles.
Nice video, thanks :)
Some countries still use wheels made of bipedal omnivores because of the low cost, expendability, and can be found almost anywhere around the world. Their versatility is also used in manufacturing things like iPhones or even expensive shoes and jewelery. Many companies, especially popular brands in North America, use them when very young because they are easier to control, can be used in smaller spaces, and are safer as well as much cheaper for use in manufacturing expensive products like iPhones, which would cost three times as much if manufactured in North America without violating any relevent laws or regulations.
So you're telling me...
I could have made my own train wheels...
Out of paper...
And then I could be the ultimate train nerd?
do you have a paper factory with a 600t press?
I love entrepreneurship!
A good idea on paper
Some of em were recentered with mild steel plates, and put under log bunks at rayoneer. I had wondered where the unique design came from.
Cant believe how long this video feels