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Preventive Measures for Common Failures of Train Wheels

• July 20, 2026
• Blog

1. Strengthen the maintenance of train wheel components

Strengthening the maintenance of railway wheels plays a vital role in reducing wheel failures and improving the quality of railway vehicle operation. The maintenance of railway wheels mainly starts from the following two aspects:

1) Give full play to the role of train inspection workplaces and railway operation special equipment, timely discover rails, peeling and wear of train wheels in use, and timely repair or warn according to the type of failure to ensure the quality of operation.

2) Even with the most standardized operation, train wheels will produce slight wear. These wears themselves are not enough to affect the operational safety of railway vehicles during operation. However, contrary to expectations, if the railway wheels are not maintained in time, these minor wears will eventually accumulate into serious failures that are enough to affect the safety of railway vehicle operation. Therefore, this requires railway transportation units to strictly follow the existing railway vehicle maintenance system to regularly maintain railway vehicles. At the same time, the relevant operating personnel of the railway vehicle maintenance unit should conscientiously and actively carry out railway vehicle overhaul work to ensure the quality of overhaul.

The main measures to improve the quality of railway staff's wheel maintenance are:

1) Introduce and use advanced railway vehicle maintenance equipment

2) Strictly implement maintenance process standards and improve the quality inspection and supervision system

3) Strengthen employee maintenance business training and implement a reasonable rotation system

4) Strengthen ideological education work, minimize the untimely or inadequate maintenance caused by subjective and objective factors, and improve the quality of maintenance.

2. Improve the quality standard of train wheels

If the quality of railway freight car wheels is excellent, the process of wheel wear can be slowed down to a certain extent. To this end, improving the quality of railway freight car wheels is the focus of railway-related staff.

1) Strengthen the research on railway freight car wheel manufacturing technology, combine existing experience, further optimize the wheel form, material, etc., improve the quality standard of railway freight car wheels, achieve excellent quality, and reduce the wear of later maintenance.

2) If the relevant railway vehicle user unit cannot independently develop high-quality train wheels, then it must also purchase wheels approved by the Chinese government. It is also necessary to purchase and use qualified wheels that meet railway quality standards certified by the China Railway Inspection Center. Because the quality of railway wheels is an important material cornerstone of railway vehicle operation. To this end, improving the quality of train wheels can not only reduce the need for subsequent maintenance, but also improve the efficiency of railway transportation.

3. Improve the operating conditions of railway vehicles

Improving the operating conditions of railway vehicles can reduce the obstacles in the operation of railway vehicles, thereby achieving the ideal effect of reducing the wear of railway vehicle wheels. Therefore, it is crucial to improve the operating conditions of railway vehicles. To this end, relevant railway staff need to do the following two things:

1) The operating specifications of the locomotive must be strictly implemented. The more standardized the vehicle driver's driving is, the less vehicle wheel failures caused by subjective factors during driving.

2) Improve the vehicle loading condition detection equipment at each railway vehicle cargo loading station, promptly discover and correct loading problems such as overloading, unbalanced loading, unbalanced weight, and overweight, eliminate factors that may affect excessive wheel wear from the source of loading, and ensure driving quality.

3) There should be strict marshaling regulations. Strict marshaling regulations can not only make relevant staff more clear about their responsibilities, but also be more conducive to the future work of relevant staff.

Of course, all the above measures can reduce railway failures, but they should also be considered from the perspective of wheels and other vehicle components. For example, improve the comprehensive performance of rail materials, brake shoes, etc., and improve the roadbed conditions. Thus, the overall operation quality of railway vehicles can be improved.