Bourbonnais (locomotive)
Bourbonnais- type locomotives were steam locomotives that were introduced in France from 1854 and then with other European railway companies . The boilers of the three-coupler machines were designed as long boilers . Bourbonnais were usually equipped with a tender and were primarily used to transport goods and passenger trains.
Bourbonnais locomotives were built until the beginning of the twentieth century. The design remained essentially the same. The individual series only differed in details, depending on the requirements of the individual railway companies.
Bourbonnais locomotives in France
The design became known as “Bourbonnais” because the machines of this type were first built in 1854 for the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Lyon par le Bourbonnais - a forerunner of the Paris – Lyon – Mediterranean Railway (PLM). The railway company, which previously used three-coupler locomotives of the "Mammut" type, needed fifty machines with a higher capacity due to the constant increase in traffic, which were supplied by Koechlin and Cail in 1854 and 1855 . The Stephenson Longboiler type locomotives with a tender had drive wheels with a diameter of 1.30 m. The horizontal outer cylinders had a diameter of 450 mm and a stroke of 650 mm. The machines developed an output of 350 hp and reached a top speed of 50 km / h. The mass of the wagon train was 1200 tons at 25 km / h on the plain, 500 tons on a 5 ‰ gradient and 300 tons on a 10 ‰ gradient.
Due to the long boiler design, the wheelbase in front of the fire box was compressed, which led to a strong overhang with an unsteady run. Even so, the Bourbonnais locomotives were widely used in France. The Bourbonnais were the most common locomotives in France in the nineteenth century. The PLM alone had around 1,300 such machines.
Bourbonnais locomotives in other countries
Switzerland
In 1858, Cail delivered five Bourbonnais D 3/3 locomotives to Ouest Suisse (OS), almost identical to those in France. Since the grate area was enlarged to 1.4 m², the boiler reached a working pressure of 9 atm. The successor companies of Ouest Suisse - the Suisse-Occidentale (SO), the Suisse-Occidentale-Simplon (SOS) and the Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS) - later obtained other Bourbonnais from different workshops, which differed in many details, so that the total number of Bourbonnais machines on the Jura-Simplon Railway after 1892 was 40.
The Nordostbahn (NOB) started operating 34 C 3/3s between 1867 and 1895 and 40 reinforced D 3/3s from 1891 onwards .
The Gotthard Railway Company (GB) procured a total of six Bourbonnais type D 3/3 locomotives for the Ticino Valley Railway between 1874 and 1876 . The machines corresponded to the Bourbonnais locomotives built at the same time in Mühlhausen for the Ouest-Suisse, the Bernese Jura Railway ( JB) and the Swiss Central Railway (SCB), but were somewhat heavier and stronger. With the opening of the mountain line, the number of three-coupler locomotives was increased by a second, more powerful series. The Gotthard Railway purchased a total of 39 Bourbonnais locomotives. For freight trains on the mountain routes, it expanded the Bourbonnais type by another axis, so that the D 4/4 was created. Their low top speed of 45 km / h was not a hindrance on the mountain routes.
Austria-Hungary
The Südbahn (SB) had a triple-coupled SB 23 freight locomotive developed by the StEG locomotive factory based on the model of the French Bourbonnais . The machines proved themselves so well that a total of 205 units were built by various manufacturers by 1872.
Italy
Because the performance of the locomotives on the line to Genoa and on the Porrettana was barely sufficient, the Società per le strade ferrate dell'Alta Italia (SFAI) added more powerful machines to its portfolio. Since the Italian industry was not yet able to build such locomotives at that time, foreign manufacturers came to the rescue. From 1864 to 1873, 166 Bourbonnais from Koechlin, Cockerill , Schneider and Parent & Schaken were imported.
The SFAI developed these machines further by lengthening the boiler, which increased the output to 400 and then 450 hp. The locomotives were given a more spacious tender and the driver's cab was locked on three sides. The SFAI's inventory was thus supplemented between 1877 and 1884 with 104 Bourbonnais locomotives from Sigl , Pietrarsa , Henschel , Ansaldo , Vulcan and Hannoversche Maschinenfabrik .
Bourbonnais locomotives were built by Italian industry and were also widely used by other Italian railway companies ( Ferrate Meridionali , Ferrate Romane and Rete Sicula ).
Other countries
Bourbonnais locomotives were also used on the railways in Algeria, Russia, Spain and Portugal.
literature
- Luciano Greggio: Le locomotive a vapore. Modelli di tutto il mondo dalle origini a oggi con dati tecnici . Mondadori Milano 1977
- Italo Briano, Storia delle ferrovie in Italia . Cavallotti Milano 1977, volume 1. Le vicende
- Italo Briano, Storia delle ferrovie in Italia . Cavallotti Milano 1977, volume 2. La tecnica 1
- Alfred Moser: The steam operation of the Swiss railways 1847-1966 . Birkhäuser Verlag Basel and Stuttgart 1967