Kamnet's Stats Shack - STILL HIRING ARTISTS!

[kamnet]

Rubber Hits the Rail - Rubber-Tyred Trains, Trams and Guided Transport
Spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

The history of the rubber, pneumatic tire is actually closely linked with the rail. Invented in 1946 by Scotsman Robert William Thomson, he described the usage of the tire as being used in conjunction with a rail. It wouldn't be realized until 83 years later when André Michelin, had a restless night aboard a train with a rough ride. The heir to the French Michelin tire manufacturing empire, he turned company resources into making train rides more comfortable.

The Pneu-Rail, which would become better known as Michelines, were the first trains to run on pneumatic tires. Between 1931 and 1941, Michelin would produce a few hundred trains that started off hauling only a dozen passengers to creating a metro-class train unit hauling over 100 passengers. The trains started out as gasoline powered, using a Renault truck frame with a 90 hp engine. The concept was mostly successful, with dozens of systems adopting the trains to take up both short routes (where the superior traction of rubber tires allowed for quick stops in short distances) as well as faster travel over long distance routes.

The concept failed when other manufacturers tried it, however, as it seemed Michelin had the magic touch. The most notable failure was American manufacturer Budd, who was not able to duplicate the success of the rubber tire on rail. But they were able to successfully implement their innovative welding of stainless steel bodies and streamlined body design, and they used that on the Zephyr line of steel rail cars. In exchange for gaining access to Michelin's wheel patents, they traded their patents for welding stainless steel to Michelin. Both sides made out well.

Rubber-Tyred Metros would have appeared in the 1940s if not for World War II. It was just as France fell that Michelin had started designing and manufacturing articulated trains on rubber tires, but now operating on third rail and pantographs. After WWII, many of the old Michelines were now worn out, and they were demotorized and turned into high-speed passenger rail cars hauled by steel wheeled locomotives. But Michelin hadn't abandoned the technology. In the early 1950s the Paris Metro was in bad shape, the Germans had ran the infrastructure into the ground. Needing an affordable way to re-establish passenger transport around Paris, Michelin joined with Renault to create both the vehicles and the switching technology. Alsthom, and later Bombardier and CAF, would go on to design vehicles and networks for Europe, Canada, Mexico and South America. New systems continue to be designed today.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the start of automation in transportation. In the United States a ground-breaking study was produced by the US government which gave rise to automated public transport - Personal Rapid Transit, Group Rapid Transit and Automated Guided Transit. The goal was to reinvigorate the air and space manufacturing sector. Unfortunately the concept was ahead of its time, the technology wasn't sufficient, and most plans failed to emerge due to unwillingness to invest the money. But the seeds were planted for Automated People Movers, and today's airport, hospital and university transport systems are the fruits of 30 years of research.

In the 1970s, Japan also got excited about bridging the gap between heavy rail, metro and suburban traffic. Subways were overloaded and constrained; light rail, buses and trams did not have the capacity to expand. AGT provided an excellent technology to make this happen. Japanese manufacturers such as Mitsubishi, Kawasaki and Niigata developed their own standards for fully-automated trains on tires which rival RTMs and can do more then APMs. The New Transportation Standards are not limited to tires, though. It can encompass maglev, monorail, cable cars or any technology that isn't traditional train or road technology.

Automated Guided Transit also isn't limited to traditional train technology. Many installations are hybrids of many technologies. Cable-hauled cars on wheels, linear induction motors floating on air, rubber tired tram-buses guided by GPS or optical cameras and painted lines. There's no limit to how this technology will continue to be used to evolve transport.

[acs121]

Do you think the Bombardier TVR counts as a rubber-tyred tram although it isn't really one ?
I'd draw it if i had your permission.

What i can do :
- the french VAL 206s and VAL 208s
- Paris MP51 (prototype), MP55, MP59, MP73, MP89 (CC and CA) alongside MP05.
- PRT prototype Aramis (was used as the southwestern outskirts of Paris in the 90s).
- TVR if it counts in.
- Translohr tramways.
- Poma 2000.

[kamnet]

Do you think the Bombardier TVR counts as a rubber-tyred tram although it isn't really one ?

Because it was mainly designed to use a center rail as guidance, much like the Translohr, it fits into the category of rubber-tyred tram IMO. I'd also classify it as tram due to the size, style and purpose for the vehicle's usage. Besides, it's effectively a dead technology that Bombardier has no interest in selling again. They're moving to GPS/optical guidance for future systems. Translohr would be very lonely without it.

I'd draw it if i had your permission.

You do not need my permission. The primary purpose of these spreadsheets is to give artists and coders more information on projects they may want to take up.

What i can do :
- the french VAL 206s and VAL 208s
- Paris MP51 (prototype), MP55, MP59, MP73, MP89 (CC and CA) alongside MP05.
- PRT prototype Aramis (was used as the southwestern outskirts of Paris in the 90s).
- TVR if it counts in.
- Translohr tramways.
- Poma 2000.

A French-based transport set? Looks like a good idea to me!

[acs121]

Yep, mainly that, i don't know much other stuff. I could do the Lausanne metros too, a few sests are based on MP89 trains.
First thing i'd do is making track sets / tram or road types.

[kamnet]

Yep, mainly that, i don't know much other stuff. I could do the Lausanne metros too, a few sests are based on MP89 trains.
First thing i'd do is making track sets / tram or road types.

In most cases, the initial metro cars on the other lines were based on cars that appeared on the Paris lines, so they're going to look and operate fairly similar, and each line's cars after that are largely inspired by the previous generation on that line. The differences may be subtle enough that it's merely a livery change, or in the case of the Mexico City Metro, adding pantographs.

[kamnet]

Not as detailed a post as I usually make for the Stats Shack, but I put together a spreadsheet of Trolleybuses in Poland to help McZapkie with an upcoming project.
https://is.gd/1w9NKf

One of the things that making these types of stat sheets does for me is that it indulges my interest in history and people. And it's always interesting to find what I can dig up and how I get to interpret that history. In gathering stats it's often not just about finding a list of rosters and some specs. Vehicles are a form of technology that human beings form intimate memories with. Often it's the technology they grew up with, they admired and were caught up in. It may have been something that their family had owned, like a plane or a truck. Or maybe they grew up with it, such as a father who worked as a bus driver or in a rail yard. So much of these stats that I gather, I have to learn of them through people's memories of not only the vehicles, but of their personal lives, and the history that goes with that.

One of the the things I learned through this was just how awful Naziism and Hitler's nationalism really was. When Germany invaded Poland, they brought with it a system of racism, oppression and cruelty that I had only heard of being used against black Americans here in the United States. I never thought I would read of it being duplicated elsewhere. I didn't know of Hitler's plan to effectively try to wipe Polish identity off the face of the planet.

The history of the trolleybus in Poland effectively starts with the Nazi invasion. As Germany was facing shortages of fuel, it meant problems with making buses run on time (or at all). Germany had recently started switching to trolleybuses, since they could procure all the coal they needed to power the electrical plants. The German manufacturing industry was being heavily subsidized by the Nazi government, so it only made sense to start rolling out German trolleybuses in the new occupied territories. These were not for the benefit of Polish people, though. The new order structure included banning native Poles from using public transportation during morning and afternoon rush hour. These hours were reserved for loyal Nazis who lived in Poland before occupation and the new Nazis streaming into replace Poles, so that it was more convenient for them to get to and from school and work. When Polish people could ride on public transportation, they were second-class citizens. They had to stand in front of the buses and wait until all Nazis boarded. Afterward they could board, but they could only sit behind Nazis, not next to them. They were not permitted to touch or speak to another Nazi. Nor were they permitted to speak in the Polish language, only in German, in order to not offend Nazi passengers.

I've read about how awful the occupation was. But to read about such minute, intimate detail was really shocking, and humiliating. It's no wonder there was such a strong underground resistance to Nazi occupation. It is amazing just how far we, as human beings, will go to humiliate and hurt each other.

Another thing I learned was just how resourceful the Polish people are. After World War II, under Soviet administration, there wasn't a lot of funding for transportation outside of Warsaw. The cities had very few resources. Cities did the best they could to resume normal life and public transportation. In many cities, they wanted their tram systems back, and most of their trams were either very worn out or destroyed. But in several cities, they had mostly removed their tram systems in favor of trolleybuses, and most of those networks were till in-tact. These cities basically swapped what they had for what they needed. The trolleybus cities of Gdynia, Lublin, Poznan, and Olsztyn rebuilt and expanded their networks from literal spare parts and scraps. Eventually they would all be gifted some trolleybuses from the Soviet Union, via Warsaw's network, and still later they would be able to purchase new trams, first from the Soviet Union, then out of manufacturers in Ukraine and Poland.

Unfortunately trolleybus transport fell out of favor in most of the country. Many cities really loved their trams, and later their buses, for local public transportation, and that's where the industry expanded. Today there are only three cities left running trolleybuses. Tychy (which started in 1982), Lublin, and Gdynia, which is known as the City of Trolleybuses and covers over 4 million kilometer of track and carries over 350 million passengers a year.