Use of the Packing Hook to Check Axles for Scoring

[NW Mailing List]

Thanks for sharing the video and the description of checking axles, Abram. Without that, I would have known the guy was doing some important thing, but not what it was (in one eye and out the other…). 

Keep the ancient knowledge flowing, and may your junque auction be profitable!

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio

Sent from my mobile

On Apr 21, 2025, at 1:07 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:



When we were discussing Hump Car Oilers a few months ago, I mentioned Car Inspectors using their packing hooks to "feel" the sides of axles, searching for scoring or cut surfaces which might indicate a failure of the Babbitt in the friction bearing.  In the video linked below, you can see this being done.  Starting at 7 min 35 sec, a Car Inspector is seen checking journal boxes.  At 7 min 50 sec, he uses his hook to feel both exposed sides of an axle.  I am very glad someone captured this ancient ritual on film, for it is now long gone.  A Car Inspector making an inbound inspection on a 100 car train repeated this ritual 800 times.  Or 1600 times, if you count him checking both exposed surfaces of each axle !  The packing hook was probably the tool he used most during a day's work. It was also used for lifting journal box lids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRXMvR7DBkc
 
There was also a much larger and much heavier version of the packing hook.  It had an oval loop for a handle, a forked piece of flat steel on its business end, and a piece of flatstock (perhaps 2 inches long) welded to one side of the shaft and used for pulling journal box certain.  I think these may have been called Packing Forks - not sure, but Mr. Gordon Hamilton will know for sure.  I never saw a Car Inspector use one of these, and suppose them to have been a Shop Track tool.  Carmen in the field preferred the smaller, lighter version.

A few other remarks about the movie:  First, the lack of gloves on Trainmen gives me pause.  No Trainman, even today, would work around rolling stock without gloves.  Second, the use of radios in Train Service in the 1950s indicates the Santa Fe was a rich railroad, and about 15 years ahead of the railroad I worked for.  Third, between 7' 15" and 7' 35" on the video, the narrator says the Engineman is making a brake application, when he is making a release;  and again says the Engineman is making a release, when he is making an application.  Did no one from the operating department review this film before release...?   Finally, there are a few scenes which, in today's world, would be violations of safety rules, but apparently were not so 79 years ago on John Santa Fe.  (Like riding an engine's forward footboard in the direction of  movement.)

Somewhere I had an old packing hook.  Wonder what became of it?  Every caboose had one of those things.  They were the perfect tool for working on the coal fire in the stove, and the hook on the end was ideal for shaking the stove grates.  And every caboose had at least one Brake Shoe Key jammed down behind the coal bin... it was used for lifting the lid off the coal stove! When it comes time to clean out Dad's Old Junk, my kids will have no idea what this old junque is...

And some day I will take a photo of a Babbitted brass journal bearing and post it.  After our Big Spring Bonanza Turnip Sale is over, and we get the big basket full of money all counted, I may have time to do that.  :-)

-- abram burnett
Thoroughbred Turnips - the New Crypto Currency !
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