INA ELGOGLIDE® Plain Bushes for SUW 2000 Gauge Change System from ZNTK Poznan S.A.

HERZOGENAURACH/SCHWEINFURT, September 22, 2004. Lengthy waiting periods, unloading and reloading of goods, pumping over liquids or exchanging bogies ¨C all this is part of the daily cross-border rail traffic in Europe and Asia. Five different rail gauges, three of them in Europe alone, incur substantial extra costs and cause considerable loss of time. Now the Polish national railway company has proved that there is a solution to the problem. Its passenger and freight cars running between Warsaw/Poland and Vilnius/Lithuania are equipped with the SUW automatic gauge change system from ZNTK Poznan S.A.. Maintenance-free ELGES plain bearings ensure that the changeover from 1,435 to 1,520 millimeters gauge and vice versa proceeds smoothly. Automatic gauge changes in regauging facilities at the frontier stations enable the adjustment of the wheel distance on the axle. When running along the gauge changeover installation after unlocking, the wheels are guided on profile rail guides in a conical arrangement via the wheel flange, in order to adjust the wheelset distance on the axle to the respective rail gauge. In this way, the formerly required exchange of the bogies on passenger cars as well as the reloading of goods into freight cars with different gauge is avoided. During gauge change, the axial movement of the wheels on the axle has to take place with a minimum of friction and wear. This is why the INA-ELGES plain bearing experts chose maintenance-free cylindrical plain bushes with ELGOGLIDEâ coating, a PTFE sliding fabric developed by INA-ELGES. These special plain bushes accommodate very high radial loads and high shock loads and are also successfully used with high alternating loads. In addition, they ensure low friction, offer good damping characteristics and allow axial motion. ELGOGLIDEâ plain bushes are radial dry plain bearings comprising a thin-walled cylindrical steel bush and a maintenance-free sliding layer. Approx. 0.5 millimeters thick, the coating consists of fabric embedded in synthetic resin and is fixed to the bush by a high-strength bond. The flow behavior of the sliding layer in conjunction with the bush is negligible even under very high load. The bond is resistant to moisture and swelling. With the assumed service life to be expected, the plain bearing is maintenance-free. In the meantime positive experience with the SUW 2000 gauge change system is on hand, which also offers impressive evidence of the excellent performance capability of ELGOGLIDEâ plain bushes. Since November 2000, a passenger train with variable gauge wheelsets is used in daily rail traffic between Warsaw and Vilnius. Changeover to the respective gauge is carried out at a speed of 15 to 20 kilometers per hour. When the bushes were inspected after 100,000 kilometers in service, they showed very little wear so that service lives of more than 500,000 kilometers can be expected.