De Dietrich Ferroviaire

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De Dietrich railcar of the PO-Midi , 1934

De Dietrich Ferroviaire is a manufacturer of railway vehicles in Reichshoffen ( France ), which is now part of the Alstom group as Alstom DDF .

prehistory

Mid-19th century began the Alsatian family of entrepreneurs De Dietrich , its production of cast iron to expand the production of mechanical products. After the Franco-Prussian War , your plant in Reichshoffen suddenly found itself on territory annexed by Germany. Eugène de Dietrich therefore founded a second factory in Lunéville , which remained French , which in 1901 became the Société Lorraine des Anciens Établissements De Dietrich et Cie de Lunéville . In the Reichshoffen plant, which remained family-owned, increasingly cast-iron products such as stoves, stoves and bathtubs were produced.

In Lunéville, railcars and sidecars for trams as well as railroad passenger and freight cars were built. As a result of the global economic crisis , the order situation deteriorated in the early 1930s, so that De Dietrich looked around for another business area in August 1931. Inspired by the combustion railcars made by Renault and Michelin and a related competition by the PLM railway company - in which De Dietrich did not take part - the production of railcars began again in Reichshoffen, France.

prototype

Unlike Renault, De Dietrich built the prototype with two traction motors. One of the considerations was to still be able to move the vehicle if one of the engines failed. The interior of the railcar could also be used better, as these smaller drives could be attached directly to the two bogies . This made maintenance easier, simplified the transmission of power to the axles and reduced vibrations. Due to the lower center of gravity, the track was less stressed. In addition, the company was able to fall back on engines from well-known manufacturers, which avoided license fees and time-consuming in-house developments. These advantages outweighed the additional costs for their acquisition and maintenance.

As a result of the twin-engine design, it was necessary to reduce the weight of the chassis and body as much as possible. Profiled steel was used for the frame of the 17.90 m long car body , and duralumin for the walls ; the cladding of the interior was made of plywood . The driver's cabs of the bidirectional vehicle, which were placed on the right because of the planned use in Alsace, were each given their own access door. The interior was divided into a main compartment with 50 seats in a 2 + 3 arrangement and two entrance areas on both sides. At the front end of the vehicle there was also a 4.5 m³ luggage compartment designed for a load of up to 1 t. In addition to the luggage compartment, the toilet was accessible from the front entrance area, and a second compartment with 19 seats from the rear. Each entrance area had a single-leaf swing door that opened outwards on both sides, and the luggage compartment had a door with two leaves.

The bogies were inspired by the German Görlitz design , the primary and secondary suspension was provided by leaf springs . To increase the friction mass, the pivot pin was shifted towards the driven axle. For better maneuverability in curves, the wheels of the front running axle with a diameter of 760 mm were 90 mm smaller than those of the drive axle towards the center of the car. The LB wheels - so named after their designer Lucien Bacqueyrisse - had three elastic rings made of rubber between the hub and the wheel tire for suspension. These wheel sets increased driving comfort, especially at rail joints and switches, but did not prove themselves and were later replaced by classic steel wheels. The vehicle had three braking systems: hydraulically activated drum brakes for driving, four magnetic rail brakes for emergency braking and a handbrake acting on the drive axles for the stand. Since De Dietrich was also involved in heating construction, it received central heating from an oil boiler in the front driver's cab was fed. A centrally mounted, dimmable headlight served as the headlights, plus two white and red lamps each at the height of the roof edge.

The two type 85 LC 4 diesel engines came from Compagnie Lilloise des Moteurs (CLM), which they manufactured under license from the German company Junkers . They were two-stroke, four- cylinder boxer engines with eight pistons, each developing 105 hp (77 kW) at 1500 rpm  . Power was transmitted to the axles via a four-speed gearbox.

The vehicle left the factory on June 24, 1933. The first test drives took place on the company's own line from Mouterhouse to Bannstein , a siding from the Haguenau – Falck-Hargarten railway line . On August 21 of that year it was officially presented to the Administration des chemins de fer d'Alsace et de Lorraine (AL), followed by test drives on the networks of the PLM , ETAT , Nord and Est railway companies by September 14 . The railcar covered 12,000 kilometers in less than a month. As a result, 29 such vehicles were ordered. The prototype went to AL for 565,000 francs , which included it in its vehicle fleet as ZZr 11. The railcars of the first series, designated as 210 ch (210  hp ), ran across the French border to Basel .

The ETAT bought six 22.20 m long railcars with 46 seats each and designated them as ZZy 24801-24806. With the ZZy 24811–24816, the company received six more vehicles in 1936, which had various improvements. They were 24.51 m long and had more powerful engines with 150 or 160 hp.

Series vehicles

From the late 1930s, railcars like the later XD 2500 were also built with pointed fronts reminiscent of a ship's bow . This shape was due to the " streamlined " fashion and was also used by competitors (e.g. Renault ABH ) and other means of transport. The basically still round front was inclined by 20 ° and supplemented by a vertical fold (see " creases front" of the DB series E 10 ). The first such vehicles were delivered to Tunisia in 1937 as twelve narrow-gauge double railcars, where they ran until around 1975. While maintaining the dimensions of the standard gauge vehicles , they received two shortened car bodies and a non-powered Jakobs bogie in the middle to maintain the envelope curve ; the two SAD six-cylinder engines from Saurer each had an output of 200 hp.

With the ZZy 24817–24821, ETAT acquired five “ship's bow” multiple units (2 × 160 HP, 26.10 m long, three car classes ) for use in high-speed traffic on main lines in 1937 . Otherwise they corresponded in many details to ZZy 24811–24816, but had a different room layout. At first they ran in common circles with the latter; after the Second World War they were converted into government vehicles and given a dining room, kitchen and bedrooms. The XD 2511 with a "ship's bow" design, which was equipped with a salon and served as a vehicle for French Presidents René Coty and Charles de Gaulle , was retained.

The last three cars ordered by ETAT (ZZy 24841-843) were single-engined. Their wood carburetor engine from Panhard & Levassor had an output of 270 hp and they went to the state railway SNCF, which was newly founded in 1938 .

Diesel multiple units were also built in the Lunéville plant in Lorraine in the mid-1930s. The three vehicles ZZ 24901–24903 went to ETAT in 1936, three more to Nord. The “Autorails Lorraine” , which are mainly used in Paris suburban traffic, differed in design and form from the railcars from Reichshoffen.

Scheme of an X 3700 of the SNCF

In 1948, the SNCF ordered 20 railcars from De Dietrich. The series designated as X 3700 largely corresponded to the first series with rounded fronts from the 1930s. The vehicles, which are 25.91 m long over buffers , were built in 1949 and 1950 and were given the road numbers X 3701–3720. The two Saurer BDXS diesel engines each had an output of 118 kW and accelerated the railcars to up to 120 km / h. The X 3700 were able to pull a sidecar and run in multiple traction with other railcars - including other series such as the X 4300 . They were used in the eastern French network and - with a third headlight - came to Germany on the Müllheim – Mulhouse railway line . They were shut down between 1973 and 1976. One example, the X 3710, has been preserved on the Train Thur Doller Alsace (TTDA) museum railway . Ten identical vehicles were sold to the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (CFL) in Luxembourg , where they were designated as Z 101 to Z 110. The Z 105 was saved from being scrapped and has been preserved in working order, the others were taken out of service between 1975 and 1978.

Further development

Meter gauge De Dietrich multiple unit in Tripoli (Greece) , 1988
De Dietrich car of the Enterprise train at Belfast Central station

After the Second World War , De Dietrich also built diesel-electric vehicles . After Greece three-piece narrow-gauge train sets were featured in the 1950 meter-gauge network of the peninsula Peloponnese delivered. The four multiple units of the meter-gauge Abidjan-Niger-Bahn, put into service in 1962, had a powered bogie with two electric motors and a running bogie, they were 22.50 m long and 80 km / h fast. The air-cooled V-8 diesel engine with turbocharger made 600 hp.

De Dietrich Ferroviaire delivered u. a. the carriages for the Enterprise train that connects Dublin and Belfast in Ireland . The company was also part of the consortium that developed the diesel multiple unit on behalf of DB and SNCF , which is run as the 641 series at DB and as X 73500 and X 73900 (also known as "Walfisch") at SNCF.

In 1995 Alstom acquired 17.50% of the company's capital, and in 1998 it acquired a majority of 68.75% in De Dietrich Ferroviaire. Since then, the plant has only been identified as Alstom DDF or by the place name Reichshoffen.

Remarks

  1. ↑ As a result of the historical development, in Alsace - unlike in the rest of France - traffic is still on the right
  2. ↑ The competition's railcars were heated with cooling water or exhaust heat

Web links

Commons : De Dietrich Ferroviaire  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g De Dietrich. Le 2e grand constructeur français d'autorails in: Ferrovissime No. 100, p. 34 ff.
  2. ↑ a b c d Les autorails Etat: les autres constructeurs at roland.arzul.pagesperso-orange.fr, accessed on October 21, 2019
  3. ↑ a b Les “pointus” de la 3 e époque in: Correspondances ferroviaires No. 12, p. 4 ff.
  4. ↑ CFL - Série 100 (De Dietrich) at rail.lu, accessed on October 20, 2019
  5. ↑ De Dietrich 500 ch. "métrique" of the Abidjan-Niger Railway at autorails.free.fr, accessed on October 20, 2019
  6. ↑ Alstom prend la majorité du capital de De Dietrich Ferroviaire at lesechos.fr of July 27, 1998, accessed on October 20, 2019