Coventry Railcar

[Ron Ron Ron]

I have searched the forum for any information or mention of this Railcar, but so far have drawn a blank.

So apologies if I've missed it.

 

Cooler looking than a Pacer?

 

lnwrlave1349.jpg

 

lnwrk161.jpg

 

lnwrlave1362.jpg

 

lnwrns1732.jpg

 

 

 

[russ p]

I think its a derivative of a Michelin pneumatic tyred railcar

[buffalo]

Some information here. Built by Hawker Siddeley but closely related to contemporary French developments.

 

Nick

[Focalplane]

There is mention of this railcar in the book on the Nuneaton, Coventry and Leamington line of the LNWR/LMS.  I don't have access to my copy (it's in France) but I remember there is at least one photo and also the comment that what happened to it is not known.  It definitely had French influences in its design.

[Fat Controller]

I think its a derivative of a Michelin pneumatic tyred railcar

It was, there having been a French-built 'Michelin'  tested initially on the line that used to run past Michelin's Campbell Road plant in Stoke (the Sideway branch). A metre-gauge example has recently been repatriated to France from Madagascar.

Though there were relatively few pneumatic-tyred railcars built, the name lingers on in France as a popular term for diesel railcars and multiple-units. The driving position was confined, such that larger drivers had little room to manouevre, hot in summer, and poorly ventilated (the exhaust was just in front of the driver, so there wasn't really the option of an opening window). Incredibly, such vehicles worked 'Rapides' from Paris to Lyon.

[EddieB]

The extended caption to the "Kenilworth" photo (linked in the OP)  gives a better explanation than the oft-repeated "fostered by Armstrong Siddley": http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrk161.htm.

[Ron Ron Ron]

I think its a derivative of a Michelin pneumatic tyred railcar

 

http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrwm421.htm

 

 

 

[PhilJ W]

There is currently an Atlas editions part-work of French rail-cars, all in HO scale. I have obtained three of them via e-bay and they are quite good and well detailed diecast models. It shouldn't be too difficult to motorise them. 

[roythebus]

Double deck too...something they say is impossible in this country.

[PhilJ W]

Double deck too...something they say is impossible in this country.

Not double deck, just a raised drivers cab. Similar rail-cars operated in Ireland.

[Fat Controller]

Not double deck, just a raised drivers cab. Similar rail-cars operated in Ireland.

And in France, where the Picassos seemed to get everywhere. The Micheline was meant to be turned at the terminus; in the Picasso, to obviate the need for this, the driver sat at right-angles to the direction of travel, and so had his neck twisted at almost ninety degrees to see where he was going and read the signals.

[EddieB]

There is currently an Atlas editions part-work of French rail-cars, all in HO scale. I have obtained three of them via e-bay and they are quite good and well detailed diecast models. It shouldn't be too difficult to motorise them. 

 

Here's what they are bringing/have brought out: http://www.editionsatlas.fr/collection/minisite/michelines-et-autorails/autorail-du-mois.html - the collection includes five Michelines - including a couple of types trialled in the UK (but HO of course).  There's also a Z-7100 "one off" offer http://www.editionsatlas.fr/collection/automotrices-reseaux-francais/z7100-sncf-1962.html.

[PhilJ W]

Here's what they are bringing/have brought out: http://www.editionsatlas.fr/collection/minisite/michelines-et-autorails/autorail-du-mois.html - the collection includes five Michelines - including a couple of types trialled in the UK (but HO of course).  There's also a Z-7100 "one off" offer http://www.editionsatlas.fr/collection/automotrices-reseaux-francais/z7100-sncf-1962.html.

I like the 'Standard-Nord', resembles the latter GWR rail-cars. I wonder if they would consider a British series, there is at least thirty different petrol/diesel cars placed into service 1900-1950 plus even more steam rail-cars.

[runs as required]

I've found some good pics on the web of both the original Micheline and the 'Picasso' version of it at Cambridge having run from Oxford. There is also a good video out there of the red and cream DMU set the LMS ran later in the 1930s on that inter-varsity service via Bletchley

 

In Paris there are the rubber tyred Metro lines that derived from those Michelin railcars and I have seen a great black and white film of the Nord Lille to Paris run sitting in the front of the Micheline.

 

dh

[mvrattler]

Google rail-cars on rubber tyres and also see Railway Wonders of the World part 14 page429. A model photo is on the Gauge 0 Guild website gallery. My own 7mm model is awainting the paintshop.

Kerry

Gympie Queensland

[sharris]

I'm modelling Willington on the Oxford - Cambridge ex-LNWR line. A Type 9 (the one with a Citroen van front end) was trialled there in 1932* before moving to the Southern Railway for further trials. In 1936 the Type 20 (it was a British built version of the French one) was trialled between Oxford and Cambridge. Both are on my to-do list!

 

* it's stretching a point a little as the trials were only actually between Oxford and Bletchley, but I want one!

 

Some references:

 

Bill Simpson: Oxford to Cambridge Railway (Vol 1) -  ISBN 086093120X (OPC) - The Type 9 I think is in this one (can't remember now if it's in Vol 1 or Vol 2)

Bill Simpson: Oxford to Cambridge Railway (Vol 2) -  ISBN 0860931218 (OPC) - The 'Coventry' type 20 is definitely in this one (same picture as mvrattler's)

Yves Broncard: Autorails De France: Tome 1: Les Automotrices a vapeur, Michelin, Bugatti - ISBN 2902808399 (La Vie Du Rail) - Both railcars, and many others are extensively described (many photographs and drawings) - as you might have gathered from the title, this one is, of course, in French.

[sharris]

Here's what they are bringing/have brought out: http://www.editionsatlas.fr/collection/minisite/michelines-et-autorails/autorail-du-mois.html - the collection includes five Michelines - including a couple of types trialled in the UK (but HO of course).  There's also a Z-7100 "one off" offer http://www.editionsatlas.fr/collection/automotrices-reseaux-francais/z7100-sncf-1962.html.

 

Photographs from the 1930s of the Micheline type 9 next to normal rolling stock show how tiny it is. A H0 version next to 4mm models might be a step too far!

[Nearholmer]

With its links to road vehicle manufacture,warwickshire was "the place" for railcar tests and trials.

 

Here is an earlier one from the same website http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrcov3146.htm

 

Although the caption says it was a PE, other researches suggest that it was actually a PM, with cardan-shaft transmission, which can just about be seen in the picture.

 

Commercial Motor in January 1912 said:

 

"The first type of these selfcontained coaches which is to he constructed by the Coventry company is a 56 ft. bogey coach. Each of the bogeys is to be driven separately by a six-cylinder petrol engine, carried respectively at the sides of the main frame, the drive being transmitted by means of magnetic clutches through long universally-jointed propeller shafts to the axles."

 

Kevin

[lmsforever]

I read an article about these vehicles in The Railway Magazine sometime ago and a very interesting one to thanks Ron Ron for this subject.

[PhilJ W]

With its links to road vehicle manufacture,warwickshire was "the place" for railcar tests and trials.

 

Here is an earlier one from the same website http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrcov3146.htm

 

Although the caption says it was a PE, other researches suggest that it was actually a PM, with cardan-shaft transmission, which can just about be seen in the picture.

 

Commercial Motor in January 1912 said:

 

"The first type of these selfcontained coaches which is to he constructed by the Coventry company is a 56 ft. bogey coach. Each of the bogeys is to be driven separately by a six-cylinder petrol engine, carried respectively at the sides of the main frame, the drive being transmitted by means of magnetic clutches through long universally-jointed propeller shafts to the axles."

 

Kevin

Its possibly an epicyclic gearbox, which is basically the same type of gearbox fitted to not only the GWR railcars but to BR DMU's and 305 hp shunters (class 03, 04 et al), the only difference would be the lack of fluid flywheel.

[Nearholmer]

I think so, Phil.

 

Somewhere, I have a more detailed description of it, but where ........ Too many books, papers, e-files!!!

 

I have a feeling that it had quite a natty arrangement whereby the starter motors also acted as dynamos to charge a set of accumulators, and that it could make short shunts on electric power (turning the engine over, and in-gear), which is where the confusion with it being a PE comes from.

 

What I don't know is whether AEC designs drew directly on it, or whether some personnel were involved in both; Fred Lanchester is an obvious possibility there.

 

Kevin

[runs as required]

Would the fact that it was a 1913 collaboration between Daimler and BSA (i.e. a German company and a British Armaments company) be any reason why the project died?

 

Daimler Benz only got named Mercedes-Benz after WW1 (the name of the French agent's daughter Mercedes) so they could sell cars again after all the slaughter.

Did the Coventry Daimler factory get appropriated by the Brits? A lot of other German companies simply disappeared.

 

My grandad worked for a German fertilizer company pre 1914 ; evidently as quite a dandy whizzing all around the world. After demob in 1918 he never found another job, retreating out to the Essex marshes as a marginal chicken farmer. In 1940 he finally succeeded in getting another job, cycling 10 miles into Chelmsford to make ball bearings for the war effort (in another ex German company).

dh

[Nearholmer]

British Daimler was never really fully German, and had been bought by BSA in, I think, 1911 anyway, so I'm not sure there was any connection between cessation of work on the railcar, and The Great War.

 

The Daimler company history/structure was b complicated, but there were outfits holding patent exploitation rights in several countries: Panhard et Levassor in France, Austro-Daimler in Austria (where Ferdinand Porsche was Director); the British company,which in turn got slightly tangled with the very dodgy Great Horseless Carriage Company.

 

And, I thought that Mercedes' father (Jellinek) was more than the French Agent, in that he refinanced Daimler (in the 1890s, I think), giving his daughter's name first to a single vehicle model ....... Anyway, too complicated to recall without checking, but his house, also called 'Mercedes', was very in nice ...... I've walked past it somewhere on the French Mediterranean coast when on holiday a few years back!

 

Your Grandfather's experience sounds exceedingly unfortunate - not a good reward for loyal service to a company.

 

Kevin

[PhilJ W]

The British Daimler company was an entirely separate company from the German company from the mid 1900's.

[runs as required]

1

Thanks for that interesting bit on Daimler; I'd always rather thought that because it was a German company  that it was the vehicle of choice for our Royal Family who only changed their name to Windsor in 1917.

Don't feel sorry for my paternal grandad - a cantankerous obstinate old man (just like my wife says I'm becoming !).

2

There has been a lot on railcar development in Backtrack magazine over the years. The NER had also built a pair of PE railcars at York in 1903, but kept replacing the engine until eventually in 1923 one was powerful enought to pull an extra coach. But the LNER preferred Sentinel and Clayton steam instead (for cost?).

Multiple unit coupling was first done on the Liverpool Overhead electrics in 1893; you would have thought someone would have applied it to PE or DE before AEC did it in the 1930s for the LMS, then the GNR(I) long before our Derby Lightweights.

One forgets the British scene was so conservative, as compared to the British owned companies overseas (such as Argentinian railways' procurement from Armstrong Vickers in Scotswood).

Enjoy some great Irish railcar pics here including Walkers of Wigan artics. And French autorails pics here  with some nice models (but sadly no Michelines)

dh