The Patiala State Monorail Trainways

[Pacific231G]

slightly  (probably quite a lot to be honest)

Thanks David,

I certainly agree that electric traction has much to commend it. As you note, it saves the need to carry fuel with the tractor, but if one is going to ballast the tractor anyway, this doesn’t seem to me to be much of an issue. It is of course pretty pollution free at the point of use, but I don’t suppose that was much of a consideration a century ago.

Is the cost of metalling & maintaining a single carriageway really much higher than that of building a railway track of similar capacity? Particularly when the cost of the trolley wires, substations & associated infrastructure is added?

Best
Simon

Hi Simon

Having got away from the Ewing system monorails experimented with by Siemens, I feel we're rather hi-jacking Stubbie's topic, so if there's interest in electric canal towing railways,  perhaps it's time to start a new one.

 

On the busier canals maintenance costs for a road for haulage verhicles were about double that for a railway. The capital costs for installing the railway in open country, where the towpath was already  fairly wide, may have been higher but the tyred tractors required a wider roadway whereas  the railway could be squeezed through narrower gaps under bridges and through tunnels. (The main reason for using 600mm rather than metre gauge in Alasace was because the canals there had narrower towpaths than the standardised French "Freycinet" canals) There were more kilometres of canal overall where petrol and then diesel tractors were used for towing but far more of the actual haulage was carried out by railborne electric "mules". The canals equipped with rails formed a continuous chain from near Dunkerque through the industrial/coal mining region of Northern France and across to Strasbourg, Mulhouse and the Swiss border with a number of important branches to places such as Lille.

The rail tractors could handle high volumes of traffic on a single track by the simple expedient that when two of them met (ofen at locks) they swapped their towropes and returned in the opposite direction so the barges would travel long distances but each tractor would remain close to home.

Electric trolley tractors were considered economical on canals where towage amounted to between half a million and a million tonnes per year, above that towing railways were justified.

 

There is a wonderfully thorough and well-illustrated website by Gerard Bianchi (contents equivalent to the complete book that he has now published) on mechanical canal towing here http://papidema.fr/halage-mecanique.php

Both of Bianchi's parents had worked for the CGTVN and he grew up in a canalside cottage.

It's in French of course but, apart from a few technical terms, Google translate seems to make a fairly good fist of turning it into something like English.

There is a much briefer article in English here http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/12/trolley-canal-boats.html

.

 

Edited January 13, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Stubby47]

Please feel free to carry on adding this sort of stuff on here - it's fascinating.

[Simond]

Thanks David, Stu,

 

I’m quite happy to read it in French. I’ll have a look.

 

Best

Simon

[Pacific231G]

Thanks David, Stu,

 

I’m quite happy to read it in French. I’ll have a look.

 

Best

Simon

I promise you won't be disappointed.