It may sound like a joke, but this is actually thought to be a "paper wheel" under our old wooden Soo Line coach 67. The "paper" is actually a type of stiff cardboard pressed between the hub and the rim, and it's the same basic idea of employing an elastic material to cushion the ride and deaden the sound as later used on PCCs.
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(Photo by Bill Wulfert)
The paper wheel was invented about 1870 by Richard Allen, a former locomotive engineer. He had been persuaded by his brother-in-law to invest in a factory making cardboard for textbook covers and so on, but the market was glutted and the factory was losing money. So he began looking for new uses for the material, and came up with the idea of using the material to dampen the noise of the wheels on the rail from being transmitted into the cars. At one time these paper wheels were widely used by Pullman and others on passenger cars. The paper is held between two plates bolted together, and you can see the bolt heads inside the rim of the wheel. At some point it might be interesting to examine the wheel more closely, but for now, it's another historic artifact in storage. IRM has lots of hidden treasures.