Trolleybus double traction
Oberleitungsbusdoppeltraktionen ( Russian Tроллейбус cистема многих единиц / trolleybus sistema mnogich jediniz ), also Oberleitungsbuszüge (Russian Троллейбусные поезда / Trolleybusnye poezda called) are a special form of trolleybus -betriebs that in the 1966-2013 Soviet Union or its successor states was found. While such multiple units have been found in rail traffic since the end of the 19th century, they were an absolute exception in road traffic .
Two two-axle solo trolleybuses are permanently connected to one another by a rigid coupling rod . The steering of the rear driverless vehicle is carried out purely mechanically like a trailer with Ackermann steering . The setpoint generators of both cars are connected in parallel. For reasons of driving dynamics, the pantographs are only in contact with one trolleybus, while the second vehicle receives its energy via high-voltage cables . In this way, problems with the towing curve in the rear car are avoided, since the catenary geometry - especially in tight curves - only allows a limited lateral deviation from the ideal line.
The trolleybuses modified in this way can usually no longer be used individually, similar to the twin railcars or guided railcars on trams . The guided vehicles often lacked part of the driver's cab equipment, the headlights or the windshield wipers . The teams could therefore sometimes only be separated and joined together in the depot . Analogous to conventional trailer trains , the front vehicle of a trolleybus train used to have a yellow trailer triangle. All of the approximately 750 trolleybus trains that have ever existed were subsequently created by conversion in the workshops of the respective transport companies , but they were never brand new.
Advantages and disadvantages
The most important advantage of the double units is their approximately one third higher transport capacity and better acceleration compared to an articulated wagon , while at the same time requiring less staff compared to two single wagons . The better acceleration is also the decisive advantage compared to operation with unpowered trailers.
On the other hand, the disadvantages of the combinations are the lower maneuverability, the higher power consumption, the greater repair effort and the lack of passage between the two cars. The latter may also require two conductors . Furthermore, for safety reasons, the teams have to run at reduced speed, especially since the second wagon can not be braked in the event of a train separation and would continue to drive without being steered. The trains do not have a compressed air connection, so the brakes on the rear car are electrically controlled by solenoid valves . In Moscow, for example, their operation was therefore banned in 1986 by the GAI traffic police .
history
prehistory
The trolleybus double traction was developed in the Ukrainian capital Kiev . Wladimir Philippowitsch Weklitsch (1938–1993), who became director of the local trolleybus depot number 2 in 1963 at the age of only 25, is considered to be the inventor . This depot, also known as “October”, was one of the largest in the Soviet Union at the time. When Weklitsch took office, he was faced with two major problems. On the one hand, the high level of damage meant that there were usually not enough wagons available for regular service. Above all, there was a lack of drivers in sufficient numbers to cope with the trolleybus traffic, which was then rapidly increasing. While the first problem could be solved by a new four-day maintenance cycle, solving the capacity problem was far more difficult.
Additional solo cars could not be used in unlimited numbers. The reason for this was - apart from the personnel problems - the busy intersection at the University station of the Kiev metro . Because there back then every 20 seconds drove a trolley bus, no more was stroke compression possible. Line 18 was also critical with a car sequence of just 30-40 seconds during rush hour. Articulated trams, on the other hand, were only produced in small numbers in the USSR after the Second World War; from 1964 to the 1980s they were ultimately no longer available. The same was true for the socialist brother states in the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (Comecon), where mass-produced articulated vehicles could not establish themselves until the second half of the 1970s. An import from Western Europe was again ruled out for political and financial reasons.
That is why Weklitsch also experimented in the mid-1960s with unpowered trailers, like those used by a few other Soviet cities such as Leningrad , Minsk , Moscow, Riga , Zhytomyr or Tbilisi . While the cities mentioned sometimes used sidecars that were smaller than the respective towing vehicles, Kiev used a trailer of the same size that was obtained from a demotorized railcar. Although this allowed twice as many passengers to be carried, this principle did not prove itself in the Ukrainian capital due to its hilly topography. On the one hand, the drive of the towing vehicle overheated too quickly and, on the other hand, these teams could not keep to the timetables - designed for operation with solo cars.
MTB-82
79 years after the American Frank Julian Sprague introduced multiple traction in electric rail operations in 1887, Wladimir Weklitsch finally succeeded in transferring this to trolleybus traffic. For this he selected the MTB-82 type , which was dominant in Kiev and in the rest of the Soviet Union, and was produced from 1945 to 1961. He equipped it with multiple controls , and the brakes also had to be synchronized. The test operation with a 21.73 meter long prototype train consisting of two MTB-82s began on June 12, 1966, before passenger operations on the heavily frequented Kiev Line 6 began in September of the same year. After this first attempt was successful, the Kiev trolleybus company formed a second double traction in October 1967. Finally, between November 1967 and July 1968, a total of 47 additional units followed, but these were built at the Kiev plant for electrical transport Dzerzhinsky (Russian Киевский завод электротранспорта им. Дзержинского / КЗЭТ), which also manufactured trolleybuses itself. 25 trains were planned for line 6 alone, the adaptation of which cost 160,000 rubles .
Weklitsch later optimized his invention so that the teams could be separated from each other at the end points in just three to five minutes. This meant that the rear wagons no longer had to be carried outside the rush hour ; this was no longer possible with the other series that were later used for double traction. In 1971, Weklitsch received the Soviet Union Medal of Honor for his invention .
In addition, only in Moscow in 1970 was an MTB-82 double traction briefly operated on line 33, but there it remained with this one test train. There were therefore 50 trains of this type, including the two prototypes, nationwide. The last of them was in use until 1974.
Škoda 9Tr
Because the type MTB-82 was already technically obsolete in the 1970s and was also comparatively short with a length of 10,365 millimeters, Wladimir Weklitsch concentrated on the further development of his double units from 1968 on the more modern and somewhat larger Czechoslovakian series Škoda 9Tr , their standard series Manufacturing began in 1961. In contrast to the MTB-82, the somewhat longer 9Tr tractions, which reached a total length of 23.61 meters, had pantographs on the rear instead of the front car.
Between 1968 and 1983 296 Škoda 9Tr combinations were built in Kiev alone, the last of which was withdrawn in 1994. The Ukrainian capital was thus the main place of operation for trolleybuses, together with the predecessor series MTB-82, 345 pairs were formed there over the years. Later, other cities followed this example, so that a total of 483 9Tr trains existed:
| Trolleybus Riga | 103 trains | in use between 1973 and May 20, 2001 |
| Tallinn trolleybus | 30 moves | in use from 1981 |
| Dnipropetrovsk trolleybus | 22 moves | in use from 1974 |
| Kharkiv trolleybus | 10 moves | in use between 1971 and 1984 |
| Sevastopol trolleybus | 10 moves | in use between 1976 and 1989 |
| Horliwka trolleybus | 6 moves | in use between 1979 and 1992 |
| Simferopol trolleybus | 3 moves | in use between 1977 and 1985 |
| Yerevan trolleybus | 1 move | |
| Mariupol trolleybus | 1 move | |
| Sukhumi trolleybus | 1 move |
The serial production of such trains ex works was planned at times under the name Škoda 12Tr , but was not implemented.
ZiU-9
The third and final series of donors for Soviet trolleybus trains was the large-scale ZiU-9 series, built from 1970 . More than 200 double units were formed from it, with the power consumption again taking place via the guided car. These teams were a little longer with a length of 25.05 meters and could be found in the following cities:
| St. Petersburg | 116 moves | in use between 1982 and 2002 |
| Novosibirsk | 25 moves | in use between 1984 and 1998, number possibly higher |
| Samara | 11 moves | in use between 1986 and 2001 |
| Kherson | 10 moves | in use between 1988 and 2002 |
| Donetsk | 10 moves | in use between 1987 and 2007 |
| Almaty | 6 moves | in use from 1981 |
| Krasnodar | 5 moves | in use between 1992 and December 31, 2013 |
| Nizhny Novgorod | 5 moves | in use from 1983 |
| Kemerovo | 4 trains | in use from 1991 |
| Odessa | 4 trains | in use between 1990 and 2005 |
| Chita | 4 trains | in use between 1984 and 1988 |
| Mykolaiv | 3 moves | in use between 1990 and 2001 |
| Omsk | 3 moves | in use from 1986 |
| Kharkiv | 2 trains | in use between 1989 and 2006 |
| Moscow | 2 trains | Trial operation without passengers in 1972 |
| Chelyabinsk | 2 trains | in use from 1994 |
| Alchevsk | 1 move | in use from 1998 |
| Sumy | 1 move | in use between 1992 and 1996 |
| Togliatti | 1 move | in use between 1989 and 1993 |
In almost all of these cities, the use of coupled trolleybuses was abandoned by 2007, only in Krasnodar were three ZiU-9 vehicles in use until the end of 2013. Since one of the three teams failed to preserve one of the three teams in a museum, there is ultimately only a - inoperative - historical trolleybus double traction in Saint Petersburg.
More prototypes
In addition to the three series mentioned, the transport companies in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa also experimented in the years 1969–1972 with a total of seven Kiew-2 and Kiew-4 double units , the results were unsatisfactory.
Outside the former Soviet Union, only three Škoda 9Tr double units operated for a short time in the Bulgarian capital Sofia from 1976 onwards. The manufacturer Škoda also carried out a series of tests in this regard without passengers in 1986 in the Czech town of Hradec Králové with a 14Tr train developed for the Soviet Union , which later also took test drives under the designations P-01 and P-02 (Russian П-01 and П-02 ) undertook in Kiev. This combination was designated by the manufacturer as type TV - 14Tr , where TV stood for Trolejbusový Vlak , Czech for trolleybus train .
Web links
- History of the trolleybus double traction in the USSR on the page “Public Transport in the Kuban Region and the Adygea Republic” (Russian), accessed on April 9, 2016
- autoconsulting.com.ua
- dontrolln-2167.narod.ru
- batona.net
- citytransport.info
Individual evidence
- ↑ riga.mashke.org
- ^ Kost Koslow, Stefan Maschkewytsch: Kyjiwski Trolejbus . Kyjiw " KYJ ", Kyjiw, 2009. p. 216
- ↑ Krasnodar - only a new vehicle and reduction of the offer , report on www.trolleymotion.eu from June 22, 2015 ( memento of the original from April 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Krasnodar. In: transphoto.ru , entry from December 31, 2013 (Russian).
- ↑ Троллейбус. Подвижной состав. КТБ-1 ("Киев-2") и К-4 ("Киев-4")
- ↑ busportal.cz
