WorldRailFans

Thanks, everyone, for contributing! A few words about Rollwagen/transporters and Rollböcken/transfer trucks (?)/ from someone who has actually been working with them - well, not the trucks, just the cars:


Transporters have to be operated rather carefully; ours in Sweden, of the common European 8-wheel variety, had a 20 mph maximum on them (I remember reading about their being used on some 891 mm /2´11"/ ex-private line with just 30-pound rails, where the maximum was 15 mph!) But on a well-aligned track they ran quite OK, even with the 32-ton maximum load. Extremely heavy or long std. ga. freight cars could also be loaded onto TWO transporters. These were then coupled together with an extra-short coupling bar - the normal ones were from 20 to 25 ft. long. This was in fact the only REAL snag with the system, as you had to lift the !+*'#%! things by hand AND FIT THEM INTO the !!%%&?**!!#!"+**, very narrow link´n pin pockets. Connecting these was a two-man job, one man giving signals to the engine and the other fiddling with the bar - pooh. Disconnecting was easier... Switching a rake of empty transporters, however, was no problem - the system included a standardized, small kind of hook weighing perhaps ten pounds, for just rapidly linking them together.


Older transporters were unbraked but more modern ones had full air brake equipment, so the coupling bars had air connections with regular hoses. The bars consisted of either a single coarse pipe or a square girder of thin welded pipes, with the air running straight through these.


Transporter trains could be quite impressive - I have seen 15-car consists myself in the 1960s! If regular n.g. freight cars were included in the consist these were always coupled next to the engine. Obviously, EMPTY transporters had to be coupled to the rear end of the train...


Transporters were used on our single 2´7" line as well as on the 3´6" network, too. Obviously they helped a number of little lines to survive for an extra decade or two, but... Naturally "ramping on" or "off" the std. ga. cars took a lot of time via the special transfer ramps.


As std. ga. cars got bigger and bigger, a few 12-wheel transporters were also built. I think their capy. was 42 tons. Only on 2´11" gauge, not on the 3´6". (Bob N., did you see the 12-wheelers on the Montreux-Oberland...???!!! I think they have, or at least had, some 6-wheel transfer trucks also!!! To my knowledge these are still used quite extensively in Switzerland and Austria.)


None of these are in commercial use in Sweden any more, just on veteran steam & preserved lines, where I got acquainted with them - thank God I didn´t have to earn my daily bread working with them... However, I understand that accidents were rather uncommon, mainly due to the very slow speeds in switching. But the stories about what COULD happen to a transporter train are legion... One engineer told me he was coming with his big Tp class 2´11" diesel north of Stockholm on the freight for the papermill at Hallstavik one morning - and suddenly, as he looked back, he had an empty transporter in the middle of his train... (THAT time the ditched std. ga. gondola contained only old recycling paper...)


/Kurt


(In fact a few of the Rollböcken/trucks were in use in Sweden, in just one place, very locally, for ultra-slow hauls of half a mile or so, where std. ga. and 891 mm ga. met., well into the 1960s! These were designed according to the most common variety, having a kind of cradle for the std.ga. car axles. As to coupling the cars together I believe you could either use the regular s.g. couplers or loose c. bars between the trucks...)

A PS: About fifteen years ago, during a railfans´ trip to DDR, I found some 750 mm gauge transporters with the Heberlein system of cable brakes, too...!!!

Kurt, the Heberlein system was, as far as I can tell, standard on all the Saxon 750mm lines,and all the transporters (these were "Rollwagen" style) had the Heberlein brake. This is one of the crazy peculiarities that seem to attach to certain clusters of narrow gauge ilnes. The Herr/Zueke HOm set of the 1960s had a model of these.

....what's a Heiberlein cable brake system?


A continuous cable operated brake? A reaction brake of some kind operated by cables between the overrunning coupler and the wheels? Or something else?


Thanks, guys.

I don't think a caricaturist could have come up with something more narrow gauge in flavor than a Heberlein brake. As far as I can see, it was a manual brake that was activated by a continuous cord that was supported by pulleys on the roofs of all equipment. It is clearly modeled on the Zeuke/Herr HOm train set, for those who might have one (at least the pulleys are there, not the cord). It appears that pulling on the cord would engage the hand brakes on all cars on the train simultaneously, via sort of a friction drum/gear arrangement on each car. Each car had an extra length of cord that was sort of tied up like extra clothesline on the end of the car if it wasn't connected to an adjacent car. The Saxon/DR locos equipped with the Heberlein brake did not have air pumps, so I assume this was the only brake except for what must have been a steam brake on the loco. But maybe someone else can provide additional info. I think if some US narrow gauges (like maybe the Maine two footers) had also had something as quirky as a Heberlein brake, no one would want to model any other narrow gauge prototype.

Regards modelling such 3 rail mixed guage prototypes, I see a potential problem which was alluded to in the original question.


Correct me if I am wrong, but since the prototype coupling are fitted to the head stock, the lateral forces will be largely balanced across the headstock so that the side forces on bogies and wheels will be largely minimised, but if (as is very common on models) the coupling is fitted dirctly to a bogie, these lateral forces go straight into the wheel sets and act against the track. This has to be a recipe for frequent derailments.

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Andy

To come back to the same concept of mixed rolling stock running on three or four rail track, I have found an example in Denmark which used "idler cars" "match" or "barrier" wagons whatever is your preferred expression.

It is the Faxe Jernbane which used narrow gauge locomotives to pull standard gauge rolling stock, via a special standard gauge wagon with dual couplings. I don't have much information on this, just a picture in a book. The track appears to be three rail.


The CFF forestry railways in Romania have I think also used this method, however with standard gauge buffers and couplings on narrow gauge locomotives. I assume this would be on four rail track, but I have not seen it in operation. Unfortunately there is not a lot of information available about the forestry and the industrial railways in Romania dating from the time when they were in their prime (that is over ten years ago, before the revolution).


The <A Href="http://www.chemin-fer-baie-somme.asso.fr/">Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme </A> has a portion of mixed standard and metre gauge symmetrical four rail track from Noyelles to St. Valery Port. They have a standard gauge Diesel shunter but I'm not aware that it ever hauls the narrow gauge rolling stock. I'm not aware of the narrow gauge locomotives hauling standard gauge stock either, but never say never.


Kurt, the MOB have transporter wagons? I have seen some which correspond to your description on the SBB Brünig line. Returning to the MOB, I did once see some MOB locomotives being offloaded from standard gauge transporter wagons, in Zweisimmen. Unfortunately I didn't notice whether these wagons were SBB CFF FFS, or BLS (marked SP).

Andy, if it will help clarify the discussion, US equipment has couplers that really aren't "fixed". Typically there are two center sills in the underframe, either wood as on the narrow gauge cars, or steel on all modern cars, spaced about a foot apart. The traditional coupler "draft gear" was a spring and friction arrangment that held the coupler shank in place in part of this space at the ends of the car. So the lateral force would be spread more widely over the underframe of the car, but the couplers were never attached to the trucks.

John B. - Thanks for the comment on the Heberlein brake. It sounds a bit like a Heath Robinson (or Rube Goldberg, if you prefer) contraption! And as you say, it does capture the essence of those 'bootlace' narrow gauge lines that were basically supplemental to regular standard gauge lines in the same or contiguous territories.


If one looks at narrow gauge in the broad sense (ouch!) as encompassing all railroads of less than standard gauge, then picture changes, and for example, Spoornet (3'6"), QR (3'6") and Vitoria Minas (meter) have operations that would outclass many in Europe. Maybe that's why there was a movement a few years back to have the Cape and meter gauges recast as "medium" gauges" - someone wanted to get away from the archetypal narrow gauge image. Of course, in South Africa, the Cape gauge is 'normal' and the term 'narrow gauge' applies only to the 2'0" gauge lines, so it's all relative.


Andy H. - I think that in the fullscale case, and as a very rough first approximation, the offset coupler forces on the idler car would manifest themselves as a couple about its yaw axis, and so in turn as equal and opposite lateral forces on each truck. I don't know if the magnitude of these lateral forces is higher than the random lateral accelerations that take place in normal operations - to use an electrical analogy, one is adding DC offset in spiky AC noise. From the evidence of actual widespread operations, I think we can conclude that offset was small enough to be tolerated. And as a longer idler car would have lower offset force, this artifice could also be used where required.

Pierre in France, perhaps you misunderstood: The concept of hauling rolling stock of one gauge with motive power of another gauge has been rather common all over the world - both over shorter and longer distances! I.e., it has in fact been VERY common wheneber you had/have dual gauge trackage! What was so special about D&RGW 3-rail operations in Colorado was that their freight trains could be made up from ANYTHING, with rakes of both std. and n.g. cars in the same train!!!


About Heberlein brakes: At least I THINK this is how it worked/works: A bit of tension is required in the cord to keep the brakes off - thus it is "automatic", being applied in case of couplers breaking and the train going apart. This also means that the braking force is very limited, since it is only effected by a spring under each vehicle. Note that Heberlein brakes were only used on slow trains and lines with "kind" gradients - I don´t think it was ever used on std. gauge stock at all. Or am I wrong here? /Kurt

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/ kurt

Well, the Halberstadt-Blankenburger Eisenbahn, a standard gauge line with steep gradient, used Heberlein brakes. But it should be noted that there were cog wheels, at least under passenger coaches, to give additional braking power on sections with rack rails (Abt system). I am not sure about the freight cars because I've never seen a good picture of these, although they probably had the cog wheels as well. There were four (!) different braking systems on the locomotives. A hand screw brake (Spindelbremse) with brake blocks on all couple wheels, brakes on the two cog wheels, Riggenbach counter-pressure brakes on both the staem engines for adhesion drive and rack drive, and the Heberlein brake that was connected to the rolling stocks. Between 1904 and 1910 the railway started to fit Hardy vaccum brakes to most of its rolling stocks and more than 50% of its locomotives. Some of the passenger coaches were also fitted with dual braking systems (air and vaccum) for interchange traffic. By 1920 the railway started to converted to Kunze-Knorr air brakes. The Tierklasse locomotives, which first arrived in 1920, still had connections for both vaccum brake and air brake. In addition to the Kunze-Knorr air brake and the counter-pressure brake the first two of these Tierklasse locomotives, Mamut and Wisent, also had cog wheels for braking purpose only. These locomotives were not rack locomotives. These cog wheel brakes must be redundant because the last two of Tierklasse locomotives, Büffel and Elch, were built without them.

The last two issues of the Australian Railway Historical Soceity's "Bulletin" magazine have had articles on transporting coal from the Leigh Creek coalfield in South Australia to a power station during the construction of a standard gauge line replacing the narrow gauge (1067mm) line. In a reverse of the "larger gauge transported on smaller", 1067mm gauge track was laid on the underframe of rakes of 1435mm wagons (these wagons were purchased for the new coal service, but didn't yet have the hoppers installed) and entire narrow gauge coal (and other) trains were transported "piggyback" style. At each end, an approach ramp was built and narrow gauge trains driven were driven directly onto the standard gauge transport. This operation lasted a few years until the standard guage line was completed.

A few more facts and ??? about transporters and transfer trucks:


The trucks were basically of two varieties. Either they had a kind of cradle in the middle for the std. ga. car axle to rest in OR they had short sections of beams 4´8 ½" apart at either edge, for the std. ga. wheels to rest on, with adjustabe stopping devices at both ends. I believe the 6-wheel variety all had the latter arrangement.


When were these first used? From what I have found in literature, it would seem that the starting-year in Sweden was 1901 or -02 with 4-wheel trucks, and about 1908 or -10 with the transporter wagons. Early references to the system mentioned their being used extensively down in Saxony on the 750 mm gauge - when did that start?


The first few transporters built in Sweden (for 891 mm/2´11" gauge) were in fact both unbraked and UNSPRUNG!! I have actually driven a steam engine once with one of those behind, and a well-loaded gondola on top of it - on 50-lb. rail trackage that was only so-so. Boy, did I go carefully with that...! But it turned out that the springs on the gon worked quite nicely; the big s.g. car just nodded and curtseyed a bit now and then.


Was this kind of thing ever used on gauges narrower than 750 mm or 2´6" ??


/Kurt

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/ kurt

I have to limit my answer to German railways. The oldest Rollwagen that I have heard of were those built around 1880 for Rappoldsweiler Straßenbahn in Alsace. Three of these Rollwagen were later sold to Mittelbadische Eisenbahn in 1892. The last of them was scrapped in 1937. Examples of Rollböck or Rollwagen in gauges smaller than 750 mm were difficult to find because, with a few exceptions, most of these railways were built as Feldbahn. They were used to transport raw material to factories or sometimes to deliver raw material to standard gauge railway. Thus, there was no need to transport standard gauge rolling stocks on Feldbahn lines. The Feldbahn track may be too light to suppot the weight of standard gauge rolling stocks anyway. By contrast, most of the 750 mm and 1000 mm lines were built as cheaper substitutes for standard gauge branch lines. Freights had to be shipped back and forth on these branch lines. The use of Rollböck or Rollwagen was probably more efficient than transhipment of freight between standard and narrow gauge railway vehicles. When 600 mm gauge line was a part of railway system that branched off from standard gauge main lines they might have used Rollböck or Rollwagen. In a track plan for Friedland, which was one of the major stations on the 600 mm railway lines in Mecklenburg and Pommerania there was a connection between the 600 mm and 1435 mm line that schematically looked like a place for Rollböck or Rollwagen. Unfortunately, I do not have any firmer evidence than this. I have never seen a picture or read about the use of Rollböck or Rollwagen on these 600 mm lines.


Strictly speaking there were Rollböck and Rollwagen in use on 600 mm Feldbahnen. They were not for the transport of standard gauge railway rolling stocks, but were for the transport of farm carts. The principles were the same, however. The axles of the cart rested on cradles of Rollböck or its wheels rested on the tracks of Rollwagen.

Sith is right the symbol at the end on meeting of standard and 600mm at Friedland is certainly the symbol used for Rollbock or Rollwagen however, since the MPSB had no such cars, I think that is the place where narrow gauge vehicles were loaded on to standard gauge 'carriers' and taken to shops etc. Leo

Just a small addition from this country, where both systems are and were still extensively used: Here, the traditional expression for Rollwagen is Rollschemel, whereas we also call a Rollbock a Rollbock .


The Liliput Rollwagen/Rollschemel mentioned far above by John Oxlade was narrow-gauge (HOe) and designed for the transport of short HO gauge freight wagons. The same applies to the Bemo Rollboecke. However, Bemo also sells a HO Rollwagen suitable for the transport of short HOe vehicles.

Actually, if I recall, the BEMO Rollwagen has both 9mm and 12mm rails on the deck so can handle H0e and H0m.

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John Oxlade (webmaster)

Yes, John, your memory is intact!

Leo, I think you are right. Stefan, I think they also use the term Rollschemel too, particularly in older documents. But I do not know German well, so I will not say anything further. I do not want to dig a deeper hole for myself.


Standard gauge Rollwagen did not seem to be as popular as the narrow gauge ones. The reason may be that you could use standard gauge O or R wagons to transport narrow gauge rolling stocks, although you would need a crane to do the job. Many narrow gauge never had standard gauge Rollwagen, although most of them used either Rollböck or Rollwagen. I am going to refer to the Mittelbadische Eisenbahnen (MEG) again because I just have a book about that railway nearby. The MEG received its first two standard gauge Rollwagen in 1903. More were acquired over the years, but all of them were gone by 1944. The use of narrow gauge Rollwagen on the MEG lasted between 1892 and 1977. There are two interesting pictures in my MEG book. One shows an MEG train with a rake of Rollwagen loaded with standard gauge R wagen and on those R wagen were 600 mm Feldbahn rolling stocks. The other picture again shows a standard gauge R wagen on the narrow gauge Rollwagen, but the R wagen was carrying a meter gauge locomotive of the MEG.

A Swedish "classic" in this field is this: What if you want to send a 2´11" gauge passenger coach to a shop on the 3´6" network? Er... you use a transporter... No, these are for standard gauge vehicles ONLY! OK, then you put the 2´11" coach on a STANDARD GAUGE transporter (for n.g. vehicles) and then put that one on TWO 3´6" transporters!!! This actually took place at least once... /Kurt