Luggage railcar
As baggage railcars , baggage motor car or luggage locomotive are on the railway railcars or locomotives designated that only one luggage , but have -Abteil no way to transport travelers. The boundary to the freight railcar is not clearly defined, as luggage and general cargo are often transported together. In the case of steam locomotives with a luggage compartment, one speaks of a steam railcar . The vehicles dealt with here are used for more economical operational management on secondary routes with little luggage volume, so there is no need to carry an independent luggage cart . Luggage railcars are usually used as tow rail cars for other passenger or freight cars.
Prussia
In 1880 Schichau built four tank locomotives with a 1A wheel arrangement and an additional luggage compartment and used them as Prussian T 0s at the Hanover Directorate of the Prussian State Railways .
Germany
In the 1920s and 1930s the Deutsche Reichsbahn procured a few copies for express general cargo transport , but the system could not prevail. After the Second World War, the Deutsche Bundesbahn converted two decommissioned railcars from the Hamburg S-Bahn into luggage railcars for use in general cargo traffic on the S-Bahn routes. These vehicles with the series designation ET 174 were retired after just a few years.
Up until the Second World War, however, two-axle baggage and freight railcars were used, particularly on small and branch lines with electric traction, to make operations more efficient. Passenger traffic was carried out with electric railcars, otherwise separate locomotives and cars would have had to be procured for freight trains. For example, the Schleizer Kleinbahn ( GT 1 and GT 2 ) owned such vehicles. The Royal Bavarian State Railways also owned such a vehicle, which, like the former, later became the property of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
Austria
In 1879, the Floridsdorf locomotive factory equipped two tank locomotives with a baggage compartment, with which branch lines could be served inexpensively. They were listed as kkStB 3.0 and kkStB 3.002 at the kkStB 1909 .
The type SB 4 II baggage locomotive with a B1 wheel arrangement, also built in Floridsdorf from 1880–1881, was used by various railway companies .
The 4061 series of the Austrian Federal Railways is also one of the luggage railcars , but was rarely used in luggage transport and was therefore redesignated as the 1046 locomotive series after around 20 years. The locomotives of the 2091 series also have a baggage compartment (apart from later modifications), but they were called locomotives by the Austrian Federal Railways after the Deutsche Reichsbahn had numbered these vehicles as railcars between 1938 and 1945. Other Austrian luggage railcars were the two examples of the ET 30 series .
Switzerland
In Switzerland there was and is such a large variety of baggage railcars and baggage locomotives that a complete list would impair the overview. The railway companies never agreed on where to draw the line between locomotive and railcar. This came to the fore most clearly with the Montreux-Berner-Oberland-Bahn , which combined in the type designation the combination of G for narrow-gauge locomotives and D for luggage railcars to form the unique GDe 4/4 , which is not permitted by the official designation system . It should be noted that the internationally valid code letter D for luggage compartment has only been used since 1962, until then the code letter F (from the French fourgon ) was used.
Locomotives with luggage compartment there were, especially in narrow-gauge railways, the most famous being the FO HGe 4/4 I . When the SBB developed a power end from the SLM Re 456 for the Zurich S-Bahn double-decker commuter trains, it made sense to use the space of the surplus second driver's cab as a luggage compartment. Nevertheless, the vehicle was not classified as RDe 4/4, but as Re 4/4 or in the new designation system as SBB Re 450 .
In contrast, the unsuccessful forerunners of the SBB Re 4/4 I , the SBB RFe 4/4, were clearly declared as a luggage railcar. The three prototypes never became a series, but they were converted for two private railways; By reducing the maximum speed, an acceptable tractive effort could be achieved, but this meant that it was “downgraded” to Fe 4/4 or De 4/4. With the first electric locomotives in the 1920s, SBB procured luggage railcars. These SBB Fe 4/4 were equipped with multiple controls right from the start and were designed to form shuttle trains together with control cars or other railcars, i.e. fixed compositions that should enable quick turning without shunting at the terminal stations, especially in suburban traffic. The concept proved its worth, but was no longer continued with purely baggage rail cars, but with rail cars that also had a baggage compartment, for example the SBB BDe 4/4 .
The SBB also procured luggage railcars for their only narrow-gauge and rack-and-pinion railway (the Brünigbahn ) on the occasion of electrification during the Second World War. These SBB Fhe 4/6 proved their worth as traction vehicles and the last copies were not definitively withdrawn from regular service until 2013, after 72 years of service. On the other hand, the luggage compartment was hardly used, which was due to the fact that the same motor vehicle rarely ran through from Lucerne to Interlaken Ost, because in between there was a cogwheel section with a leader and a hairpin in Meiringen. So every train had a baggage car behind the baggage car, at least as long as the trains were still carrying baggage.
The predecessors of the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn also procured luggage railcars ( FO Deh 4/4 I , BVZ Deh 4/4 and FO Deh 4/4 II ) in the 1970s . Here, however, they were intended for shuttle train traffic from the start, only individual vehicles were and are used as locomotives, also in front of freight trains.
A last category of luggage railcars that is worth mentioning and has now almost disappeared are vehicles procured for freight transport on narrow-gauge railways. The two-axle single piece of the Bernina Railway survived as a shunting vehicle, but is still known as the De 2/2 151 . The modern De 4/4 121 of the Aare Seeland mobil , which was only delivered in 1987, is still in use for freight transport .
The Swiss series RFe 4/4 , here after the conversion to the De 4/4
A Deh 4/4 of the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn
Baggage rail car De 4/4 121 of the ASm from 1987
Combined baggage and mail rail car of the Montreux-Berner Oberland-Bahn , designed as an articulated vehicle with a Jakobs bogie
France
The four-axle electric locomotives E 1 to E 13 were built between 1900 and 1907 for the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans (PO). They obtained their traction current from a lateral conductor rail , but also had a small pantograph for traffic under an overhead line . They were used in the tunnel between the Parisian train stations Gare d'Austerlitz and Gare d'Orsay . In contrast to the series, the E 9 to E 13 locomotives had two driver's cabs at the ends of the vehicle instead of the central driver's cab. A luggage compartment was created in the central area of the vehicle. Between 1930 and 1937, the E 1 to E 8 were adapted for use in shunting traffic; the SNCF, founded in 1938, took over the machines as the BB 1200 series (road numbers 1281 to 1293). The BB 1292 (formerly E 12) was converted into the version with a central driver's cab in 1948. Four locomotives (BB 1289-1291 and BB 1293) kept both driver's cabs and the luggage compartment. Among other things, they were used in front of internal staff trains to the Vitry-sur-Seine depot . After 60 years of service, the BB 1200 were shut down between 1965 and 1967.
United Kingdom
There are hardly any luggage railcars in Great Britain, but a specially equipped series of ten vehicles was in service from 1959 to 1992. The "boat trains", which operated as connecting trains to the ferries between Dover or Folkestone and London, required more extensive transport capacities for luggage than other trains. In addition, the tracks in the port facilities were not fully electrified (with the usual third rail), among other things because swivel bridges had to be passed. Thus, as a supplement to the four-part multiple units, which often led the boat trains in pairs, class 419 single vehicles with a luggage compartment and traction batteries were created that allowed the train to move even without power rails. These batteries could then be charged as soon as direct current from the grid was available again. With the opening of the Canal Tunnel, the boat trains disappeared and the “Motor Luggage Vans” (MLV) migrated to the company vehicle fleet. After all, eight of the ten luggage railcars are still available on three museum railways.
Hungary
Individual evidence
- ↑ Conducteur de locomotives extraordinaires in: Ferrovissime No. 100, pp. 68 ff.