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User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/Renard Road Train

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The Renard Road Train was a road train invented in France c1902 by Colonel Charles Renard. It consisted of a tractor unit and a number of six-wheeled steerable trailers. Drive was transmitted to each trailer's centre axle through a series of cardan shafts from a power take-off at the rear of the tractor. The system could be adapted to haul fare-paying passengers or freight. It was sold and used all over the world as a road-going alternative to regular train services, albeit at a maximum speed of around 12 miles per hour.

It was manufactured in France by MM. Surcouf et Compagnie from 1903 to 1911, and in the UK (chiefly for export) by Daimler from 1907 to 1913. Daimler developed a six-cylinder version of their Daimler-Knight engine for the road train, later variants of which powered the Daimler-Foster agricultural and artillery tractors, and the first British tanks.

Design

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  • Techno stuff

Engines

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France
Various engines were used to power the road train. The first tractor units were made by Darracq. Other early French models used a Filtz 4-cylinder 75hp engine made in Levallois-Perret, a western suburb of Paris.[1] This motor had twin horizontal pistons driving twin vertical crankshafts geared to a central shaft with a horizontal flywheel, with a belt drive to the 4-speed gearbox. It was also used in Turgan-Foy cars.[2] These Filtz geared engines were prone to load shocks which damaged the teeth on the gears, leading to reliability problems.[3]

A French-built version of the road train exhibited at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition at White City, London used a 40 hp Abeille, made in Saint-Quentin, Aisne.[4] The technical director of Renard was Frédéric Airault who—like the designer of Abeille engines, Adolphe de Mesmay—had also previously worked at the fr:Société française de constructions mécaniques (SFCM), also based in Saint-Quentin.[5]

Britain
Daimler (recovering from bankruptcy in 1904) began manufacturing the Daimler-Renard road train from 1907. In their 1908 model they fitted one of their own 4-cylinder engines. With four separate cylinders (bore x stroke 185mm x 150mm) and conventional poppet valves, at 5 miles an hour it ran at 700 rpm[6] with a top speed of about 12 miles an hour.

Daimler had become interested from c1907 in a new engine designed by the American Charles Knight: with Frederick Lanchester as a consultant, they developed a series of highly successful Daimler-Knight engine double sleeve-valve engines which were to power all Daimler cars and commercial vehicles until the 1930s. The first 'Silent Knight' engines were first announced in September 1908, and in 1910 a Daimler-Renard road train was announced with a six-cylinder, 80 h.p. Daimler-Knight engine with a single half-speed crankshaft driving both inlet and exhaust sleeve-valves. The train pulled up to four wagons.[7][8]

Further engine development

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BSA bought Daimler in September 1910, who started work on a Daimler-Foster agricultural tractor, with the 75-80 hp engine originally located behind the the rear axle. This was developed by early 1912 into a 100 hp engine (150x150mm) with inlet and exhaust sleeve-valves driven by separate crankshafts. With a new cylinder head design it produced 105 hp, and powered the Daimler-Foster Artillery Tractors which hauled the BL 15-inch howitzer, and the British Tanks Mk. I to IV in 1916 and 1917.

History

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France

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The Renard Road Train was invented by Charles Renard, a colonel in the French Army and dirigible pilot. He had previously invented a system of preferred numbers; a high-capacity electric battery; a method for producing and storing hydrogen gas; improvements to torpedo boats; the captive observation balloon, the meteorological balloon, and a theory of heavier-than-air flight.[9] He commanded the fr:aérostation at Chalais-Meudon, where he built the airship La France in fr:Hangar Y.

The road train was manufactured by Édouard Surcouf, another keen airship pilot, in his factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb west of the centre of Paris.[10] Trials were held in 1904 in Remiremont and in the Vosges, east central France. Renard died suddenly (possible suicide) in his laboratory in April 1905. Nevertheless, a number of companies were set up to provide regular passenger and freight services using Renard road trains.

Renard's brother and former adjutant, Commandant fr:Paul Renard, and Surcouf who owned the patents, formed the Société française des trains Renard in 1907, with a capital of 1,750,000 francs in 1750,000 shares of 100 francs each.[12] The technical director was Frédéric Airault, previously a co-director of Buchet since 1903.

A British company, the Renard Road & Rail Transport Corporation, was set up in March 1907 (see below). A number of test passenger services serving Annonay in the Vosges department took place in June 1907.[13]

Airault left in 1909 to be the technical director of CGT (later Air France), founded by Louis Blériot, the industrialist Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe and Surcouf.

The Société des trains Renard ended operations in 1911 in the face of increased competition from the railways.[11]

Britain

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Manufacture of Renard train & sole selling rights for Britain and Ireland, all British colonies, Italy & S. America.

Australia

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A number of Renard Road Trains were imported to Australia.[14]

Operators

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Renard road trains were used in the following countries:[15][9]

  • Austria / Hungary
  • Australia
  • Burma
  • Canary Islands
  • Egypt
  • Canada
  • France
  • India
  • Iran (Teheran-Rasht)[16]
  • Jamaica
  • Manchuria
  • Netherlands
  • Paraguay
  • South Africa
  • Spain, inc. Barcelona.[17][n 1]
  • Turkey

Other interested governments included Ceylon, Natal (now part of South Africa), Queensland, Russia and Tasmania.[20]

See also

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References

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Notes
  1. ^ April 1908: a French-built Renard train was in Terrassa, northern Spain.[18] Renard Trains were used during the construction of a hydro-electric plant at Camarasa.[19]
Citations
  1. ^ Filtz had an address at 96 Rue Carnot. "Club Automobile de Seine-et-Oise". L'Automobile en Seine-et-Oise : Revue mensuelle (in French). Versailles: 2. 5 February 1905.
  2. ^ Georgano & Andersen 1982, p. 247, 628.
  3. ^ Moteurs non conventionnels (in French)
  4. ^ "Motors and Machinery at Shepherd's Bush". Commercial Motor: 3. 25 June 1908. Retrieved 20 March 2016. NB The name of the engine is misreported as a 'Beille' engine.
  5. ^ "Airault, Frédéric". symogih.org (in French). Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA). Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  6. ^ "Details in the new Renard Trains". Commercial Motor: 5. 17 September 1908. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
  7. ^ "The Latest Renard Trains". The Commercial Motor: 5. 28 July 1910. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
  8. ^ Motor Traction, volume 11 (1910), pp. 55, 114-8.
  9. ^ a b Bailleux, C. "Le train Renard en Seine Maritime, Janvier 1904". Comité de Jumelage Gournay-en-Bray—Hailsham (in French). Retrieved 25 February 2017.
  10. ^ "Comme nous l'avions annoncé, la commission départementale, qui avait recu pleins pouvoirs du conseil général, vient de fixer, apres entente avec MM. Surcouf et Cie, constructeurs a Paris, la date et l'itinéraire des éxperiences du train Renard dans la Meuse." "Meuse: Le train Renard" (PDF). Est Républicain. Nancy (Vosges). 22 March 1904. p. 2f. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  11. ^ a b Demange, Aurélie. Bénas, Aurélia (ed.). "Transports publics, mines et carrières (1810-1989)" (PDF) (in French). Archives municipales de Remiremont. p. 5. Retrieved 25 February 2017.. See also Theveny, Bruno. "Le Train Renard". La Vie du Collectionneur (in French), 1 December 1994, n°71, pp. 16-17.
  12. ^ Share certificate, Société Francaise des Trains Renard, 29 January 1907. "Auction: SW1014 - Bonds & Share Certificates of the World, Lot 104". Spink & Sons. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
  13. ^ "Itinéraire du passage du Train Renard d'essai" (PDF). Le Journal d'Annonay (in French). 29 June 1907. p. 3. Retrieved 25 February 2017.. (See also p. 1)
  14. ^ Martin, Liz (February 2013). "The Renard Road Train system". Transmission (20): 8–12. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  15. ^ The Brisbane Courier, 31 October 1908, p.13
  16. ^ "Le Salon de l'Automobile" (in French). Le Temps, supplement, 8 December 1906, p. 2
  17. ^ El tren Renard en Barcelona (in Spanish). Retrieved 24 February 2017.
  18. ^ Verdaguer, Joaquim (17 September 2014). L’efímer Tren Renard (in Catalan). Retrieved 24 February 2017.
  19. ^ Transport Hidroelectric (in Catalan).
  20. ^ Steam Tractors and Road Trains The Commercial Motor, 9th December 1909, p. 24. 25 February 2017.

Sources

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