Weitzer-De Dion-Bouton railcar
The gasoline-electric railcars of Fahrzeugfabrik Weitzer János Rt. From Arad with an internal combustion engine of the French manufacturer De Dion-Bouton were the first mass-produced railcars in Europe.
history
In 1902, the Hungarian Minister of Commerce, Lajos Láng, initiated the development of an internal combustion engine in order to reduce operating costs on branch lines .
First, two railcars with mechanical transmission were built. One was equipped with a Daimler engine, the other with a Bánki engine. Both prototypes did not work as expected. The company Ganz & Cie. conventionally circumvented the problem by installing a De Dion Bouton steam engine . This is how the series Cmot VIIIa and VIIIb of the Hungarian state railway Magyar Államvasutak (MÁV) were created. The Weitzer company instead used a gasoline-electric drive from De Dion-Bouton, which proved to be successful on test drives in 1903 and was in regular use from 1906.
technology
In 1900, De Dion-Bouton fitted a passenger car from the Belgian company Pieper with a gasoline-electric drive using a single-cylinder four-stroke engine. Weitzer applied this principle on a somewhat larger scale, with a 50 or 70 hp De Dion Bouton four-cylinder engine driving a generator that fed two electric motors of 30 hp each placed under the car floor . These in turn each drove one of the two wheelset shafts . Siemens-Schuckert supplied the associated electrical equipment . The maximum speed was between 60 and 70 km / h. The operating voltage was chosen so that electricity from the overhead line could also be used on electrified lines.
The front compartment of these one-way vehicles housed both the driver's cab and the engine-generator machine set . In contrast to the prototype, the series cars had an elongated pipe system over the roof for cooling. The cars were equipped with couplers at both ends , and the standard gauge versions also had buffers . So they could carry up to two lightweight sidecars .
Types and distribution
At least 41 standard gauge railcars went to the Aradi és Csanádi Egyesält Vasutak (ACsEV). The car bodies of the prototypes were largely similar to the MÁV steam railcars, which were built at the same time, with a single entry platform at the rear end of the car. With a service mass of around 15 tons, they offered 40 seats. Longer cars were then built in series. They had a central entry and two car classes .
The Romanian state railway Căile Ferate Române bought two railcars in 1907 . The cars had first and third class compartments and two boarding areas, an end platform for the third and a middle platform for the first class. These cars had an exhaust pipe with a long silencer on the roof lengthways .
Alföldi Első Gazdasági Vasút (AEGV) used four somewhat smaller wagons with the same drive system and similar room layout as the ACsEV wagons for the inner-city lines of their 152-kilometer-long narrow-gauge network with 760 mm gauge, two bought directly from Weitzer in 1906/07, two from Weitzer in 1916 the Gyulavidéki Vasút (Gyulalandbahn).
The meter-gauge local line Arad – Podgoria was opened in 1906 with eleven Weitzer-De Dion-Bouton railcars. The name of the then railway company Arad-Hegyaljai Motorosított Vasút (AHMV) referred to the motor drive. As early as 1911, however, the company electrified its network and replaced gasoline-electric vehicles with electric multiple units . The Weitzer railcars were converted to non-powered passenger cars with a luggage compartment in 1913 .
The Nyíregyházavidéki Kisvasutak (NyVKV, about Nyíregyháza-Land Narrow Gauge Railways ), which connected Nyíregyháza with Dombrád since 1905 and had a track width of 760 millimeters, procured four in 1906 and another Weitzer railcar in 1907. In 1911, the railway in Nyíregyháza was expanded into an electric tram, and Ganz & Cie. Catenary railcars for city traffic, but also gasoline-electric railcars. The gasoline-electric railcars on the overland route were equipped with pantographs so that traffic within the city could be carried out purely electrically.
Whereabouts
After 1945 the remaining wagons came into the possession of MÁV. Six of these cars, which were now designated as BC mot 331 to BC mot 337 (without 335, "BC mot " stands for "railcars with second and third car class") came to the Budapesti Helyiérdekű Vasút (BHÉV) suburban railway around 1960 . The company gave two of the cars a thorough overhaul, replaced the gasoline engines with diesel engines, replaced the generator and electric motors and also renewed the car bodies. The radiator on the roof of the car was now hidden behind a screen. One of the cars was refurbished shortly after the turn of the millennium. As a historic vehicle, it has been numbered DM XII ever since. Another of the six railcars is in a museum elsewhere.
See also
literature
- Arnold Heller: The automobile engine in the railway company , Leipzig 1906, reprinted by the Salzwasserverlag 2011, ISBN 978-3-86444-240-7
Web links
- Röll: Encyclopedia of Railways → Electric Railways , there section VII. Automobile railcars → to b) gasoline, benzene or gasoline-electric railcars
- http://www.us.archive.org/about/terms.php → Search: “Self-Contained Railway Motor Cars and Locomotives” → GO! → Raymond S Zeitler, American School (Chicago, Ill.): Self-Contained Railway Motor Cars and Locomotives , paragraph SELF-CONTAINED RAILWAY CARS 57–59
- Röll: Arader and Csanáder Railways United Joint Stock Company
- BHÉV museum vehicles and their history
Individual evidence
- ↑ Istoria "Sagetii Verzi" ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Nyíregyházi villamos motorkocsik ("Nyíregyháza electric railcar", in Hungarian)