Prosper Pechot

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Colonel Prosper Pechot
The Péchot-Bourdon locomotive built by Baldwin Locomotive Works from the Dresden Transport Museum on loan from the Frankfurt Feldbahnmuseum
A Péchot Bourdon locomotive pulls three Péchot trucks
Colonel Péchot uses 4 bogie cars with 4 axles each to transport a heavy cannon over a turntable with a diameter of 1.70 m

Prosper Charles Marie PECHOT (* 6. February 1849 in Rennes , † 29. May 1928 ) was a French artillery - Colonel .

Live and act

After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871, the French army was looking for a suitable means of transport for the transport of weapons, ammunition, supplies and troops. To this end, various approaches were investigated, including light railways with 400, 600 or 1000 mm gauge .

Colonel Péchot was, in collaboration with Charles Bourdon and Paul Decauville, a pioneer of military light railways with a gauge of 600 mm. He developed a steam locomotive with two chimneys but only one steam dome installed in the middle of the locomotive, a further development of the Fairlie locomotives used on the Ffestiniog Railway , which had two steam domes.

The Péchot system was developed in 1888 with portable track yokes , bogie wagons with as many axles as possible and Péchot-Bourdon steam locomotives with 600 mm gauge, which were used worldwide for military narrow-gauge railroads well beyond the end of the First World War . It was quick to move and could carry heavy weapons or ammunition and supplies in large quantities. In the spring of 1888 there was already a light rail link between Toul and Lucey with a gauge of 600 mm.

In 1888, Colonel Péchot carried out a decisive large-scale experiment in the presence of War Minister Charles de Freycinet : The challenge was “to get the equipment and supplies that the siege and field armies need to fight and live at the desired time to the intended location outside of the standard-gauge railways during a maneuver in May 1888, the artillery demonstrated that six 155 mm guns could be transported by light rail over a distance of 5 km in less than an hour, built in batteries and supplied with ammunition. The Péchot system thus proved its functionality.

The Système Péchot with a track width of 600 mm was released in the summer of 1888 for the construction of connecting routes to all border fortresses. The army officially called it Artillery Equipment 1888 ( Matériel artillerie 1888 ). By the beginning of the 1890s, an almost 700 km long narrow-gauge network was laid, which was used by 56 Péchot-Bourdon locomotives.

Pechot's portable tracks were made entirely of steel in track sections of different lengths. The sleepers were also made of steel and were profiled so that they clung to the floor or gravel bed. When laying the track yokes, the official maximum limit of 50 kg that a man can carry was not allowed to be exceeded. A 5 m long track yoke carried by four men therefore weighed no more than 170 kg. The route had to be easy to lay, i.e. prefabricated, in order to lay 10 km per day. On the other hand, it had to carry an axle load of 3.5 tons, the minimum necessary for the trains and their locomotives. A 48 t cannon transported on the Decauville Railway at the Paris World Exhibition (1889) was therefore transported with 16 bogies to be exhibited under the Eiffel Tower at the Paris World Exhibition in 1889 . The Système Péchot was able to deliver two to three thousand tons of ammunition and supplies per day on a 10 km long route, and also transport large artillery.

In January 1915, Péchot became director of a military school in Jouy-en-Josas, southwest of Paris, where courses on the construction and operation of military light railways with 600 mm gauge were held.

Appreciation

Works

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Takeover of the Pechot-Bourdon field railway steam locomotive of the VMD by the FFM. Lok Report, 23 September 2019.
  2. ^ Prosper Charles Marie Péchot on Geneanet.
  3. ↑ La fameuse Péchot-Bourdon sera exposée en France!
  4. ↑ In the Works: Wright Scale and military railways.
  5. ↑ a b Les petits trains de la grande guerre. Archives ECPAD, page 6.
  6. ↑ In the Works: Handyside, Colonel Péchot and ExpoNG. 20th October 2015.
  7. ^ Sarah Wright: Colonel Péchot: Tracks to the Trenches.
  8. ↑ In the Works: From Festiniog to Péchot Bourdon to Brigadelok. May 16, 2015.
  9. ↑ In the Works: Colonel Pechot, a melancholy centenary. March 11, 2017.
  10. ↑ In the Works: Colonel Péchot - it's personal. 29th July 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Pechot, Prosper
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Péchot, Prosper Charles Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French artillery colonel and light railroad pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Rennes
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1928