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(erielack) Friction Bearings

I was thumbing through the EL color book on rolling stock the other day,
when it struck me odd that the EL seemed to be rather late in accepting
new cars with roller bearings.  As far as I can tell, it was somewhere around
1965-66 when new car deliveries started appearing with roller bearings
factory applied.  Even a few captions in the book made reference to a
'unique' 100-ton friction bearing truck that was placed under some new
covered hoppers in 1964, which makes it sound like the rest of the world
had already moved on to roller bearings by the time 100+ ton cars
started appearing.

Doesn't that '65-'66 timeframe seem rather late?  I know alot of the
friction bearings were replaced with roller bearings inside the original
friction bearing truckframe, but were all of them converted?  What
percentage of EL cars still used friction bearings?  When did the FRA
come up with their rule that prohibited interchange of cars with friction
bearings?



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