FRENCH LUXURY TRAIN RUNS ON RUBBER WHEELS
From William Latham, Reuter’s Correspondent By Air Mail France is the first country in the world to have a train running on pneumatic tyres because ML Andre Michelin, of Michelin Tyre Company, in February, 1929, spent a sleepless night in a sleeping coach between Paris and Cannes, on the French Riviera. When he arrived at Cannes, M. Michelin told his brother Edouard that the clanging of metal wheels on the track had kept him awake, and the brothers agreed that rubber wheels would remove the nuisance. Their idea met with scepticism. The skilled engineer to whom they proposed an experiment replied with Gallic picturesqueness: “ That would be rather like walking bare-footed on a knifeedge.” He went ahead with it however, and now, 20 years after, the SNCF (the State-run French railways) has a rubber-tyred luxury express running on the important Paris to Strasbourg line. Leading French railway experts said that they proposed to continue the idea when planning new services. The Strasbourg express has no sleeping coach because the journey of 507 kilometres (316 i miles) will take only five hours on a daytime run, but to equip sleeping cars with rubber wheels is naturally one of the railway designers’ next objectives. Railway coaches fitted with pneumatic tyres have previously been used experimentally on other lines; but this is the first mainline train to be completely constructed for the purpose. Only when another heavy express thundered past on steel wheels did the traveller in the “silent” train realise what he was missing. The light coaches, including first and second class, refreshment and saloon cars, are built of streamlined stainless steel and aluminium alloy weighing 14 tons instead of 40 tons. Two five-axle wheel carriages mean that there are 20 wheels to each coach, the weight on each air-filled tyre being reduced to less than a ton. If a tyre fails, a special device permits continued running until the next station is reached.
FRENCH LUXURY TRAIN RUNS ON RUBBER WHEELS
Otago Daily Times, Issue 26963, 24 December 1948, Page 3
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