Wiesenburg monorail

The Wiesenburg monorail was a light rail system for the low-friction transport of forestry products.

history

Anton Wiesenburg & Sohn had leased a complex of forests on the Croatian military border, south of Zengg (Senj), and intended to transport over 30,000 cubic meters of wood per year to the seashore. The lack of draft cattle and the high costs of transporting them with ordinary wagons on the road gave Adolf Wiesenburg, the head of the company, the idea of building a vicinal railway .

This railway was to lead partly with a gradient, partly with an upward gradient from Mrkvište to Alan, from where an excellent road with a continuous gradient led to the coast and the further transport offered relatively few difficulties.

functionality

The wooden long sleepers were 184 mm wide and 211 mm high. They lay on edge on the street and protruded above the level of the ordinary street. On the left and right of the upper surface metallic rails were fastened by nails with recessed heads.

The track width was 175 mm. Either a cast iron wheel with a flange on both sides ran on this track, or a double wheel with a flange on each side. The axis of this wheel, or double wheel, was almost in the middle of the length of the car. At one end of the car it rested on a second axle, on both sides of which ordinary road wheels with wide rims were stuck.

The loading of the wagon should be as even as possible and take place in such a way that the normal from the center of gravity exactly hit the end of the first tenth of the distance between the two axles on the track. The wheels that run on the track were therefore loaded with ⁹ ⁄ _{10 of} the gross load, the two wheels running on the road with ¹ ⁄ _{10 of} the gross load. If long timber was to be transported, two turntable wagons could be used, with the friction nail attached exactly at the end of the first tenth of the distance between the two wagon axles. The weight of the car was approx. 250 kg (5 ctr.), The length 3 meters, the load capacity 3 t (60 ctr.) The road only required a crown width of 2.40 m. If it was wider than eight feet, there was enough room for a walkway next to the driveway.

The advantages of this system were as follows:

The tensile resistance to be overcome was brought to the same value as for railways with regard to ⁹ ⁄ _{10 of} the gross load; only ¹ / ₁₀ of the load was to be regarded as road load.
All that was needed was a simple superstructure which, in addition to the aforementioned longitudinal sleepers, consisted of short cross sleepers or stone slabs.
The production costs were so low that they were insignificant in comparison to the reduced expenditure on horses and servants.

Combined traffic

Steep stretches could also be overcome with four-wheeled wagons designed for road transport without a leader, as a pair of Wiesenburg wheels running on the Wiesenburg track ran under the wagon, with which the front axle of the wagon was raised so that the wheels of the front axle were about 16 cm floated above the ground and ¹ ⁄ _{10 of} the total load of the car was transmitted through the rear wheels and ⁹ ⁄ ₁₀ through the small pair of Wiesenburg wheels.

Cost accounting

The car was manufactured according to a construction that is very reliable in detail. The cost of the road for the monorail amounted to 16,000 Mk. Per mile, the cost of the railroad beam to 3,732 Mk., The rails to 12,000 Mk., The cross ties to 1,600 Mk. The laying cost about 4,000 Mk. The cost of a train mile, exclusive procurement of the car park and the horses, thus amounted to less than 10,000 Mk.

If such a system has only been operated for 20 years, or even shorter, and the annual freight to be transported did not exceed a certain amount, the transport costs including amortization, even taking into account the expensive cattle operation, turned out to be very low.

This inexpensive means of transport was particularly effective where, as on the Croatian military border, there were good roads anyway, but the transport of cattle was either too expensive or not possible, and where the timber for the longitudinal and cross sleepers was large and inexpensive Amount was available.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Edmund Heusinger von Waldegg : Handbook for special railway technology. 1878. Fifth volume, pp. 528-530 (see also reprint from 2020. ISBN 978-3-84604-840-5 ).
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Wilhelm Franz Exner : Modern transport in the service of agriculture and forestry. Weimar, 1877.

[Heusinger-1] A ^b ^c ^d Edmund Heusinger von Waldegg : Handbook for special railway technology. 1878. Fifth volume, pp. 528-530 (see also reprint from 2020. ISBN 978-3-84604-840-5 ).

[Exner-2] A ^b ^c ^d Wilhelm Franz Exner : Modern transport in the service of agriculture and forestry. Weimar, 1877.