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In today’s video, we take a look at Michelin’s attempt to get into the railway game by giving railcars rubber wheels and why that’s not such a great idea.
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Picture & Information References:
https://www.armstrongsiddeleyheritagetrust.com/the-railcar
https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrwm421.htm
https://www.madamagazine.com/en/die-letzten-michelines/
https://www.komugi.io/en/blog-en/21-industrial-epistemology/66-90-years-of-the-micheline-9-facts-you-may-not-know.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micheline_(railcar)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budd%E2%80%93Michelin_rubber-tired_rail_cars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_tram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro
http://www.stephenjohnsonrailways.co.uk/Coventry%20Railcar.htm
https://goerlitz.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-47.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnauMOuMTls
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/cambridge/index6.shtml
http://www.stephenjohnsonrailways.co.uk/Coventry%20Railcar.htm
http://www.northeast.railfan.net/diesel32.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/16401127761
https://archive.commercialmotor.com/search?term=Michelin+railcar&page=2
https://trainconsultant.com/2020/09/08/les-michelines-le-train-en-pantoufles-de-bibendum/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXoVMz7OYfw
The Engineer
National Railway Museum Collection
Commercial Motor Archive
Chapters:
0:00 [SurfShark]
1:24 [Intro]
1:54 [Michelin]
3:25 [First Railcars]
4:51 [Tests in Britain]
6:23 [Budd Railcars]
8:39 [Problems with using Rubber]
12:09 [Legacy]
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There are several designs of industrial hi-rail switchers that use road wheels directly on the rail and have drop guide wheels to negotiate curves. Shuttle wagon and pettybone are the two that come to mind most often in the states.
I vaguely remember seeing photos of some of these Michelin railcars but I never knew the reason as to why they looked so automobile-like or that they had rubber tyres. A very incredible design for its time!
🤣 i,ll bet the 13ltr V12 got great fuel economy, i think in some ways rubber tyres are a good idea but Only light use NOT heavy freight!! The BIG disadvantage of car tyres is when they Worn out the ADD to millions and millions of already DEAD car tyres dumped where ever, NOT enviromentally friendly and they can NOT be recycled to come back as New tyres!!
Do a video on the Santiago subway pls pls pls
hey congrats on the sponsor!
And that lost you a viewer , I am required to pay for a TV licence , thank you for diluting the value i get from it by encouraging people to lie to access a paid-for service.
Rubber car tyres existed long before these trains came along.
Apparently also tested in the Netherlands. The picture at 4:58 in the tests in Britain part shows a Michelin railcar with a British looking steam engine behind, but this steam engine is a Dutch class 3700.
I figured the silver slipper looked familiar. Glad to see I was correct.
“Traction Tyre: The two center driving wheels are fitted with rubber traction tyres, to provide maximum hauling power.”
I would have figured only tiring the passenger cars would have been the solution, rather than the engines/railcars.
The Paris Metro uses rubber tires and is much quieter than either the London Underground or the NYC Subway trains.
The Montreal and Paris metros should keep rubber tyres to themselves
Why is this reminding me of when Top Gear cave a car train wheels
During my time with British Rail Engineering during the 70’s I machined many a steel tire to be shrunk onto steel wheels. Now I believe they are one piece units which can be reprofiled.
When your mother wants you to be a bus but you want to be a train:
Could you please stop mixing imperial and metric units in a single video
3:52 – 4:12 Maybe it's because these were lightweight vehicles that're also using internal combustion engines?
I would assume the rubber tyres decrease the amount of wear on the track. Underground systems must run constantly so minimising track maintenance is a must, have good acceleration and breaking as well as tackling steep slopes. Underground trains are never too far from maintenance facilities. Moving the maintenance burden from the track to the rolling stock could find some niche uses with underground systems but tyres do generate the most heat under acceleration and breaking. The tyre dust problem still may not be fixed though.
A clarification about friction: The friction that you need for starting and stopping is sliding friction of surfaces. More of this does not necessarily impede motion at continuous speed — after all, consider cog railways. Rubber tires have an additional way of losing energy, though — they flex much more than steel wheels, and that flexion is not perfectly elastic, but instead dissipates some of the energy that went into flexing them as heat. This type of loss will occur even if the wheel is operating on wet or icy rail, which greatly reduces the sliding friction but leaves the flexional friction unchanged (apart from whatever effect temperature has on it).
That said, many HiRail vehicles use rubber tires on the tracks. (A fair subset of HiRail vehicles have the rubber tires lifted off the tracks entirely, and if they use them at all it is by pressing them against the steel wheels that run on the rails — this is not about them.) The HiRail vehicles that use rubber tires directly on the tracks also have steel guide wheels. Of course, HiRail vehicles have rubber tires for the purpose of road travel (in some cases even off-road travel) when they are not on the rails, so the drawbacks of rubber tires are viewed as acceptable. They are usually maintenance of way vehicles, and in some cases road-capable yard switchers, thus lessening the impact of the drawbacks of rubber tires.
Even so, I have seen videos of a Hi-Rail truck acting as a locomotive, pulling a substantial train on a standard heavy rail line. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQPZP_ifyiw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-W-jHpMbx8
Of course, the rubber tires available today are a LOT tougher than those available in the 1930s.
France loves their rubber subways
I love your video's
You missed the opportunity to explain that modern radial tires for automobiles came out of the development of the tires for the Michelines. These were the first steel radial tires, when automobiles at the time had bias ply tire cord. Radials lasted much longer.
Mexico literally has entire trains with rubber tires…
Ironically, the basic idea of using air pressure to improve riding quality is now widespread on passenger trains: Airbags as on an Amfleet coach, and pneumatic shock absorbers on nearly all modern passenger cars.
Do Japan train next!
This kinda reminds me of the rubber rings some model railways have to enhance traction. Were rubberised driving wheels on an otherwise steel wheeled train ever tested?
recurring correction: while a wheel deforming generates more grip due to larger contact area, the grip is what effects rolling resistance. It is the not-100% efficiency of the wheel deforming and un-deforming.
If you think for a second, a non-slipping wheel would have 0 speed difference between it and the rail/road, making grip a non-factor.
Idea, other way around. Cat with steel tires.
My favorite story about these was the fact the pennsy's cars would "bounce off the tracks like a child".
You should talk about the Galloping Geese from the Rio Grand Railroad
Because then what you're looking for, is a bus
A bus limited to tracks