HOW THE TRAIN TURNS!

Nilavanathi Arasu T. Class XII, Good Earth School

The Trip and the Trains
Most of us had never really given specific thought to how a train turns until the first morning of our
annual school trip (this year to Hyderabad and Aurangabad), just outside the train station at
Secunderabad. It was a five day trip this time, and four out of the five nights were to be spent on a
train. We were waiting for the buses that were to take us to our hotel rooms, and everyone was
engaged in random conversations until someone brought up the question. How do trains turn? It
was a funny little question, but after a little research back at
home, Ive learned that the answer is way more fascinating
and subtle than one would expect, and that although
simple, the idea behind it was pure genius.

What makes things turn?

The idea of turning something is a very common
experience in day to day life. You can apply a force on the
body, in such a way that the line of action of the force does
not pass through a pivot (if it has one; or some point that
the object should be turning about, like its centre of gravity). Such a couple of force is called a
Torque. Imagine pushing a table at just one side, and not in the middle; it would not move to a
different place, just turn. Another way to get the table to turn, perhaps as you were attempting to
move it from one room to another, would be to have one person move their corner of the table at
one speed, in a certain direction, while the other could move theirs at a higher or lower speed, in the
same direction. Since the table is a solid body, it doesnt get disfigured by the forces applied on it to
make one side of it move faster than the other, it just turns. This is because one side ends up moving
a greater distance than the other, so the object ends up facing a different direction (try walking with
your right leg taking giant steps and the left one taking mini ones I tried it and its fun) In short, to
turn something, the outer side of it must cover more distance than the inner side or, given the same
time period, the outer side must move faster than the inner side.

How Cars Turn

In cars the right and left wheels are not directly connected to one another. Instead, they have
something called a differential; a system of gears that allows the wheels to rotate at different speeds.
Since the wheels of a car are capable of moving at different speeds, it is pretty easy to make it turn,
because the wheel moving faster covers a greater distance than the slower one. For example, if the
car is to turn right, the left wheel will spin faster than the right wheel, so that it can cover the extra
distance it needs to travel to allow the car to turn right.

Why Trains Cant Turn Like Cars Do

While this works very well for cars and buses, it doesnt work for trains because the two opposing
wheels on a train are attached to one another, and so they have to move at exactly the same speed.
Of course, one way to solve the problem would be to assume that the trains wheels work just like
toy cars wheels do! That is, that the wheels that have to cover a larger distance just slip over the
track to make up for the distance they do not actually cover by turning. While this works for toy cars
on a Hot Wheels track, it cant work on a life sized train for simple reasons. The amount of heat
due to friction would be enormous, and would quickly wear down both the tracks and the wheels, if
not disfigure them at once. The secret to how a train turns isnt in how the wheels turn. Its in the
shape of the wheels. To understand this further, one needs to understand not linear motion, but an
important concept in physics called uniform circular motion.

Uniform Circular Motion

In physics, the motion of a body traversing a circular path at constant speed, in such a way that its
distance from the axis of rotation remains constant at all times is given a special name Uniform
Circular Motion. Think of a point of reference on a wheel or a fan moving at constant speed. When
a body is following uniform circular motion, its average speed can be determined, but not its average
velocity, since velocity is defined as the rate of change of position in some specific direction, and
here the velocity of such a point would average to zero. To make sense of such a motion, since we
come across such things quite often, we define angular velocity (Greek letter omega) as the
angle (Greek letter theta) covered by the point in one second. In general, it is called the rate of
change of angular displacement and is defined exactly as



= 
 = [/]
 


When it is non-accelerated circular motion, we can simply define it as
=  . In degrees, we could
say, for example, that the speed of rotation of a body is 90 per second. An object rotating with such
a speed would complete one full rotation in 4 seconds. Since calculating an angle in terms of degrees
is mildly difficult for our purposes, the SI unit of angle known as a radian (rad) is preferred. So the
unit of angular velocity is radians per second (rad/s)
The Radian: The definition of radian comes from the definition of the angle itself. The angle is defined as
  ()
 () =
! ( )
Since both arc length and radius both have the same unit meter, angle is a ratio of two lengths. In the specific case
that we want to measure the angle for one complete circle, then form the definition we have

2#
= =
= 2# 6.28318  [ # 3.14159]
One radian is, therefore, the angle made when the length of an arc included by the angle is equal to the radius of the
circle. Our familiarity with the unit degree tells us that one complete circle is 360. Therefore, comparing degree
and radians, we have the relation 2#  = 360 or 1  57.3

Now consider this. If you were to stand, facing east, then slowly turn in such a way that you are
1
facing north after one second, then that implies that you have an angular velocity of 2 rad/s (90/s).
Now, if you were to hold a two meter long stick in front of you, and repeat the same thing, in the
2

same span of time, every point on the stick would have the same angular velocity. That is, it would
cover the same angle during equal time intervals. The actual speed however (as any friend trying
to hold on to the other end of the stick and move along with you would tell you), is very different.
This is because of the distance between the axis of rotation (you) and the point (or friend), i.e. the
radius of the circle. Further away from the axis, a point has to cover a greater distance to cover the
same angle. The actual velocity (or speed, rather) (3), of a body undergoing uniform circular motion
therefore, is defined as the product of angular velocity, and the radius of the circle ( ), 3 =
.
More the distance of a point from the center (greater R), more is the velocity of the point*
Now what does this have to do with anything? Well, the speed of rotation of a wheel, and the speed
of the object moving because of the wheel are different for the same reason. If a wheel was to make
1 rotation per second, it means that in one second it would cover a distance equal to its
circumference. This however, depends upon its radius. (So bigger the wheel, the faster you can travel
even if it has the same angular velocity).
By this argument, you dont really need the wheels of a car to rotate at different speeds to turn;
having one large wheel and one smaller wheel, rotating at the same speed would provide the same
result (Like a nail kept on an inclined surface does not roll off, it rotates about its nail head). The
distance covered by one of the wheels just has to be different from the other!

How the Train Turns

Notice in the diagram that the wheels are tapered; as though
they are parts of a cone. Now, when a train runs on a
perfectly straight track, its wheels can remain at an
equilibrium position, with the radii of the parts of both the
wheels touching the track being equal (as you can see in the
diagram).
When the track is curved, however, the entire truck (the
wheels-and-axle assembly) tends to shift to one side. It
shifts away from the direction of the turn, in such a way that
the inner wheel will be touching the track with a point on its
wheel having a smaller radius, and the outer wheel, which
has to cover a greater distance, balances on a point with a
larger radius.
That is, although the (angular velocity) for a train is constant, because of the conical shape of the
wheels (varying values of r), the wheels are capable of covering different distances in the same time
(3 =
).
The conical shape of train wheels also has another effect on how rains move, although this was most
likely not an intended effect. Have you ever noticed a sort of swaying motion of a train? It seems to
be moving slightly back and forth from right to left. This is because the train might not always
*

We human beings seem to instinctively know this concept of uniform circular motion. Everyone knows that
touching the blades of a rotating fan can be dangerous as opposed to touching the center of its rotation!

remain exactly on the track. So if it accidentally moves to the right, then the right wheels will be
turning on a larger radius, and the left on a smaller radius. This would cause the train to turn left,
back toward the equilibrium. If due to momentum it carries on too far, then the positions would be
revered, the wheels would cause the train to shift right, again towards the equilibrium position. This
often repeats when a train is moving in a straight line, giving rise to the very familiar swaying
movement that is usually associated with trains.
Thats how the train turns!
Suggested Video
Physicist Richard Feynman explains how a train stays on the tracks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7h4OtFDnYE