Building: Locomotive Shop
Machine Power: hand
HAER Map Key: 12
Date Built: unknown
Manufacturer: unknown
Model: unknown
Serail Number: unknown

The tranverse jack is a device for removing and reinstalling wheelsets (wheels and axle). The jack is mounted on a small trolley running on rails in a pit running perpindicular to the two tracks in the building. This enables the jack to be rolled clear of a locomotive on either track. The pit has a sub-pit along its centerline where the shaft of the jack retracts.

In operation the jack was rolled under the centerline of a locomotive under a wheelset already unbolted from the loco. It was raised until the cradle on the bop of the jack cam into contact with the axle and lifted the wheelset slightly off the rail. The sections of rail above the transverse pit could then be removed and the jack lowered into the pit with the wheelset on it. It could then roll free of the locmotove to the center of the shop. The jack was then raised until two short sections of rail could be placed under the wheelset to suspend it above the pit. The jack was then lowerd and the wheelset could be rolled between the tracks to the machining area.

After the end of the common carrier era the jack laid mostly forgotten in the pit. In 1987 during the rebuilding of locomotive #14, Keley Anderson, part of the team from the Strastburg Railroad rebuilding #14, rebuilt the jack at Strasburg and reinstalled it for the work on #14.¹

In early 2011 the jack was reportedly used again to remove a wheelset from the M-7 diesel locomotive in 200 or 2010.

¹Locomotive and Railway Preservation, Jul/aug 1988. p. 19
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