Micheline (railroad)

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Micheline Type 22 in the Mulhouse Railway Museum (Cité du Train)

A Micheline is a rail bus , light railcar or light multiple unit, in which the wheels are equipped with pneumatic tires . This design was developed by Michelin in the 1930s . The name Micheline was subsequently used often for diesel railcars in general in France .

Rubber wheel

Special pneumatic tire for Micheline railcars
Demonstration of a Micheline railcar in Utrecht 1932
Type 5, record vehicle from 1931

The aim of this invention by André Michelin was to improve travel comfort. A wheel with a central recess had to be developed that could roll on the narrow rail head, was able to go through switches and could also carry the weight of the vehicle. The first version was patented in 1929 and subsequently the wheel was built with a more resistant metal structure. The track is guided on the rail by a flange formed from the rim . In addition, the car bodies had to be light. Consisting of duralumin , construction methods from aeronautical engineering were used for their construction. The first prototype was presented to the railway companies in 1931 .

To promote this invention, Marcel Michelin , son of André Michelin , organized a record drive on September 10, 1931. The number 5 Michelin prototype drove from Paris Saint-Lazare to Deauville and back again. On the way back, the vehicle covered the 219.2 kilometers between the stations in two hours and three minutes, which corresponds to an average speed of 107 km / h; this underlined their usability. As a result, numerous vehicles of this type were built at Michelin.

Michelin also built rubber-tired coaches for long-distance transport . Such express trains , drawn by steam locomotives , ran between 1949 and 1956 on the routes from Paris to Strasbourg and Basel .

See also: Métro sur pneumatiques

commitment

Micheline in Tananarive

The railcars built by Michelin were in use on the French railways for many years before and after the SNCF was founded. Micheline railcars were also adapted for the narrow gauge in the French colonies in Africa , Indochina and Madagascar . There, in 1937, Micheline railcars covered the 369-kilometer route Tamatave - Tananarive in nine hours, which corresponds to a cruising speed of 44 km / h, and the tires lasted 20,000 km.

Two copies exist in Madagascar, where they are still used for tourism. One example is on display in the Mulhouse Railway Museum.

The Budd Company built three vehicles in 1932/1933 that also operated according to the Michelin system. The vehicles had tires manufactured under license by Goodyear . However, the vehicles did not prove themselves and were withdrawn or converted within a short time.

  • Type 11 of the PO from 1932

  • Micheline in Langrune-sur-Mer

  • Micheline Type 22, 1934

  • Type 23 of the PLM

  • Electric type 136 of the SNCF (formerly ETAT ) in the western Parisian suburbs, around 1939

literature

  • Yves Broncard, Yves Machefert-Tassin, Alain Rambaud: Autorails de France: Les Automotrices à Vapeur, Michelin, Bugatti, Volume 1, La Vie du rail, Paris 1997 ISBN 978-2-902808-39-7 .
  • Gaston Labbé: Les Autorails dans les colonies françaises , in Chemin de fer régionaux et urbains N ° 281 (2000), reprint of an article published in 1937 in Traction nouvelle on the Michelines in Madagascar.

Web links

Commons : Micheline  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schweizerische Bauzeitung, Volume 102, Number 8, Article New Micheline Rail Bus from 1933
  2. ↑ Les rames Michelin sur la Région Est, pp. 18-23 in: Loco-Revue 2/1952, accessed on July 23, 2019
  3. ↑ Labbé, see bibliography
  4. ^ Bert Pennypacker: Budd before the Zephyr . In: Trains . Kalmbach Publishing Co., April 1973, ISSN  0041-0934 , p. 24-28 .