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40: An early '30s Barber Stabilized S-1 truck with
spring-loaded friction wedges between the bolster
and side frame; note the small springs just visible at
the edges of the spring box which applied pressure to
the wedges. This truck had a spring plank as well as
Barber lateral motion devices.
40
Barber stabilized trucks
With the example of after-market friction snubbers before
them, all of the major truck manufacturers began to explore
the design of trucks with built-in snubbers. The first such truck
to reach the market was the Standard Car Truck Co.'s Barber
Stabilized S-1, which appeared in the early 1930s (40). It had
a spring plank and was not self-aligning, but it incorporated
spring-loaded triangular steel wedges between the bolster and
side frames which snubbed out excessive motion and harmonic
oscillation. It rapidly demonstrated superior riding qualities
and doubtless would have been more widely adopted if the
depression had not severely reduced the production of new
freight cars.
By the late 1930s, an improved version of the Barber Stabilized
truck, the Barber S-2, was introduced. At first it also had a
Freight Car Trucks - 16
41
41: A later S-2 version of the Barber Stabilized truck,
still with a spring plank. The small springs bearing on
the friction wedges had been moved in so they were
behind the front row of main truck springs; note the
wedge pockets inside the bolster and the tops of the
wedges that are just visible between the bolster and
side frame.
spring plank (41), but a self-aligning spring-plankless S-2
quickly followed (42), as well as the 70 ton Barber S-3 (43).
The S-2 was so successful that it was licensed to other truck
manufacturers and, following World War II, became one of the
two most widely-used freight car trucks, the other being the
ASF A-3 (below). The Barber S-2 design was easily modified for
roller bearings, and as a roller bearing truck, it remains in pro-
duction today.
ASF A-3 Ride Control trucks
American Steel Foundries developed the ASF A-3 Ride Control
truck in the early 1940s, but before it could be placed on the
market World War II broke out, and the federal government
MRH-May 2013
