Step track
Stepped railway (also walkway) was a kind of light rail that was invented in 1890/91 by the brothers Wilhelm (1845–1920) and Heinrich Rettig , royal building officer in Poznan , to cope with local passenger traffic in large cities. The name staged train stems from the fact that passengers can get on and off the train, which is traveling at full speed, while walking on platforms arranged one above the other.
Stepped railways consist of three or more lanes, each with a height difference of around ten centimeters , running at different speeds in the same direction next to the platform . Each of them consists of a closed ring that is moved by stationary machines with cables. The actual passenger transport takes place on the topmost, highest located lane, which is provided with a long row of benches for this purpose and has the greatest travel speed. The lower carriageways are platforms without benches and form, to a certain extent, movable platforms.
The lowest (first) lane moves at the speed of a pedestrian (about 5 to 6 km / h) and can be easily accessed from a fixed platform while moving. The second carriageway has twice as high a speed and thus the speed of an ordinary pedestrian compared to the first carriageway.
The aim was to get the rapidly increasing passenger volume in big cities under control with the help of step lifts. A trial system in Chicago had 75 cars 3.6 meters long and 1.725 meters wide. The upper track had three-seater benches at a distance of 90 centimeters. This train covered only 10 km per hour and could carry up to 33,000 people per hour. This would require the use of 66 trains with 10 cars each with 50 seats in a normal railway.
At the Berlin trade fair in 1896, a step train was also in operation. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 , a step train with an electric drive was shown.
literature
- Norbert Heinze: The stepped train. In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter 2019, pp. 150–159.
- Step train at the World's Fair in Chicago. In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , 12th year 1892, No. 32 (from 6 August 1892), p. 338 f. ( Digitized version )
- From the Berlin trade exhibition in 1896. The railways. In: Glasers Annalen , 52nd year 1896, issue 461 (from September 1, 1896) pp. 85–89. ( Digitized version )
- Wikisource: New Railways. In: Die Gartenlaube , year 1896, issue 42, p. 714 ff. - Sources and full texts
- The step train at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 and its predecessors. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 313, 1899, pp. 3-7.
- The special means of transport of the Paris World Exhibition. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 315, 1900, pp. 605-610.
Web links
- Step track. Retrieved November 8, 2010 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Julius Mandl: The stairway of the Rettig brothers. In: Weekly of the Austrian Association of Engineers and Architects , year 1891, No. 16/1891 (XVI. Year), p. 156. (Online at ANNO ). .