Renault railcar

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The Renault motor cars (Autorails Renault) were rail vehicles of a branch of the French automobile company Renault , which was called Société des automobiles Louis Renault until 1922 , then Société anonyme des usines Renault (SAUR) and in 1945 became the Régie nationale des usines Renault .

RS1 with Scemia superstructure in Soissons Saint-Waast station
The only NK railcar at the Chemins de fer des Côtes-du-Nord

After his success in automotive engineering, Louis Renault looked for ways to expand his company. He found it in the railway industry , where there were no light, simply built vehicles for transporting people until after the First World War . Renault, like other designers at the same time, recognized the possibility of largely using components from motor vehicles.

history

Preserved VH in the Mulhouse Railway Museum
ZO from 1934
ABH of the 8th series at the Chemins de fer de la Corse , 1994
Two-part ABV2 with the striking roof structure typical of the ABJ3
X 3800 "Picasso" of the SNCF in Dinant , Belgium , 1984
X 4200 in Avignon , 1974
X 2800 in Laqueuille station , 1991

At the Renault plant in Boulogne-Billancourt , where the motor vehicles were also manufactured, the first rail bus, the KA type, was built in 1921 . Like the vehicles built by Georges Tartary around the same time , this was a one-way vehicle. For the first time, a bogie was used instead of a rigid front axle. Apart from that, however, it was largely similar to a typical road vehicle on a truck chassis. Seven of the meter-gauge KA were built and delivered to four French narrow-gauge railways and one more in Brazil between 1922 and 1925 . The Tramways de la Vendée received two chassis in 1925 and built the bodies in their own workshop.

From 1921 Renault also built mining and small locomotives . In order not to leave the field to the bustling competitor De Dion-Bouton , another omnibus-like vehicle was created in 1924 with the type NF , of which only two copies were made. At the same time, the first bidirectional RS type vehicles were developed with the Société de construction et d'entretien de matériel industriel et agricole (Scemia) . Of the two-axle railcars there were the four types RS1 to RS4, which differed mainly in terms of the motorization and the number of driven axles. 69 vehicles of the types RS1, RS2 and RS4, which could also pull sidecars , were sold and u. a. also exported to Spain (gauges 1672 mm and 1000 mm), Italy ( standard gauge ), India ( Cape gauge ) and Denmark (meter gauge ) . Some foreign companies only ordered the chassis and manufactured the bodies themselves, while the French predominantly preferred the standardized Scemia design.

In addition to the light railcars, the KE (standard gauge, 2 units) and KF (meter gauge, 3 vehicles) vehicles were built on two bogies in 1923. There were also only a few specimens of the types NF, NK and RH. It was not until the narrow-gauge type PF, built from 1927, that numerous vehicles could be sold again. In 1929 the standard gauge types TS (four-axle; five vehicles) and RJ (two-axle, one vehicle) followed. That year the company moved to the Seine island Île Seguin near Paris .

In 1931 14 copies of the two-axle, standard-gauge rail bus TE were built, some of which were transferred to the SNCF with the Chemins de fer de l'État . Its successor, the type VG from 1933, had rounded edges instead of the box shape for the first time. The four-axle type VH, developed at the same time and of which 100 vehicles were built, looked even more modern. The following year, the VHD type was developed as a double multiple unit, but only two vehicles left the factory. Two-axle rail buses from 1934 were the standard gauge ZO and ZP. The 49 four-axle ABH railcars built between 1935 and 1949 were designed for the meter gauge. They ran in different versions and eight consecutive series (ABH1 - ABH8) u. a. also in today's Senegal and in French Indochina .

The ABJ series became even more widespread, and from 1935 more than 230 vehicles (standard gauge and Iberian broad gauge ) left the factory. The sub-series ABJ1 to ABJ4 differed mainly in their engine cooling, which gave the ABJ3 a striking appearance with a radiator grille on the front of the roof structure. The ABJ2 also ran in Spain and what is now Tunisia , several ABJ4 came to the state railway SNCF after it was founded and were integrated into their numbering scheme as X 3600 . 17 units of the ABV series were created as a two-part ABJ; there was only one vehicle of the three-part ABL. Other four-axle railcars for the standard gauge built from 1936 were the types ADP (16 vehicles), ADX² (22) and AEK (22). With the 32.73 m long and 150 km / h fast AET, which was only produced in one copy, the development of railcars initially ended.

After the Second World War , some of the old series were continued, in 1949 ABJ7 were delivered to Spain. With the U150, a standard gauge railcar on bogies was created in 1948, which attracted attention with an asymmetrically mounted driver's cab that protruded over the roof of the car. Fifty-five units ran as X 5800s from 1953 onwards at the SNCF, the last ones were parked in 1977.

In 1949 the Renault company bought a factory in Choisy-le-Roi . The railway sector was relocated from the Île Seguin to its facilities in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges .

In 1950 Renault delivered the first of 110 railcars of the U300 series to the SNCF, which they called the X 3800 . Another 141 such railcars were built by other companies under the leadership of Renault. The largely low-floor vehicles, commonly known as “Picassos” because of their eye-catching design, were on the road all over France and also across borders.

In 1952/53, Renault also developed large diesel and gas turbine locomotives with the types 5040 and 5070 . With the type 5050, the plant put two six-axle gas turbine locomotives on the rails in 1959 and 1961, which were running at SNCF as the CC 80000 series . However, they did not prove themselves, so it stayed with the prototypes. According to the prototype created by Brissonneau et Lotz , Renault built 20 rubber-tired four-car trains of the MP 55 series for the Paris Métro in the mid-1950s .

With the type U825, the company achieved a last big hit. The 825  PS (607 kW), standard gauge railcars of the SNCF X 2800 series were designed for use with sidecars in the low mountain range . 119 units, 103 of them by Renault, were delivered to the SNCF from 1957, and in 2009 the last one was taken out of scheduled service.

Renault built eight copies of the three-part meter-gauge multiple unit type 5110 for the train from Blida to Djelfa in Algeria . One of these vehicles was tested in June 1957 at the Chemin de fer du Blanc-Argent (BA), where it reached speeds of up to 100 km / h.

In 1959 a new type of railcar appeared for the last time with the observation railcar of the SNCF series X 4200 . The design of the 10 units built came from Paul Arzens , and until 1985 they were mainly used in express train services on scenic routes.

In 1962, Renault stopped building railroad vehicles. The last vehicle to leave the factory was the X 2919 railcar of the X 2800 series.

Remarks

  1. The JB and KG models from competitor De Dion-Bouton had a front axle based on the Tartary-De-Dion track guidance system, in which four wheels, individually suspended on interconnected side members, provided improved tracking
  2. RS = Renault Scemia
  3. No vehicle of the type RS3 (40 HP, one driven axle) found a buyer
  4. The number corresponds to the engine power in hp

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g Le site de Louis Renault at louisrenault.com, accessed on January 9, 2018
  2. ^ A b W. JK Davies: The Light Railway Railcar in Western Europe . Plateway Press, East Harling 2004, ISBN 1-871980-52-6 , pp. 94 f .
  3. WJK Davies: op. Cit. , P. 176 ff.
  4. WJK Davies: op. Cit. , P. 120 f.
  5. X 3400 SNCF (Renault ABJ 2) at trains-europe.fr, accessed on January 10, 2018
  6. U 150 at franzitrains62, accessed on January 10, 2018
  7. Le matériel ferroviaire Renault at renaultoloog.nl, accessed on January 10, 2018
  8. CC 80000 at uxtobirza.free.fr, accessed on January 11, 2018
  9. ^ Jean Robert: Notre Métro . 2nd Edition. J. Robert, Neuilly-sur-Seine 1983, p. 311 .
  10. ^ Geoffrey Nickson, Eric Martin: Le chemin de fer du Blanc à Argent . 2nd Edition. Editions du Cabri, Breil-sur-Roya 1989, ISBN 2-903310-78-5 , p. 70 .