Steam railcar
The first steam railcar was an experimental unit designed and built in 1847 by James Samuel and William Bridges Adams in Britain.
In 1848 they made the Fairfield steam carriage that they sold to the Bristol & Exeter Railway, who used it for two years on a branch line.
The first steam railcar was designed by James Samuel, the Eastern Counties Railway Locomotive Engineer, built by William Bridges Adams in 1847, and trialled between Shoreditch and Cambridge on 23 October 1847.
An experimental unit, 12 feet 6 inches (3.81 m) long with a small vertical boiler and passenger accommodation was a bench seat around a box at the back.
[2] In 1905, the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway purchased a steam railcar from Kerr, Stuart and Company.
All units having been withdrawn by the end of the 1950s, as of 2012[update] one car is preserved operational at the Czech Railway Museum in Lužná (Rakovník District).
[8] Between 1901 and 1908, Ganz Works of Budapest and de Dion-Bouton of Paris collaborated to build a number of railcars for the Hungarian State Railways together with units with de Dion-Bouton boilers, Ganz steam motors and equipments, and Raba carriages built by the Raba Hungarian Wagon and Machine Factory in Győr.
The Ganz company started to export steam motor railcars to the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Japan, Russia and Bulgaria.
[9][10][11] In 1928, the Leopoldina Railway (de) purchased a steam railcar for inspection services by Sentinel Waggon Works.
[15] Introduced either due to competition from the new electric tramways or to provide an economic service on lightly used country branch lines, there were two main designs, either a powered bogie enclosed in a rigid body or an articulated engine unit and carriage, pivoting on a pin.
However, with little reserve power steam railcars were inflexible and the ride quality was poor due to excessive vibration and oscillation.
After trials in 1924, the London and North Eastern Railway purchased three types of steam railcars from Sentinel-Cammell and Claytons.
Experiments with a steam railcar in 1926 led to the acquisition of many examples of this type of vehicle by the Egyptian State Railways.
The three-axle vehicle consisted of a single-axle engine unit and a two-axle double-deck carriage part, rigidly coupled together and separable only in the workshop.
In 1906, the Prussian state railways bought two steam railcars, one fired by coal and the other oil, from Hannoversche Maschinenbau AG.
After the war ownership of the car passed to the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany, and in 1959 was converted into a driving trailer and withdrawn in 1975.
[57][58] In 1907, the Otavi Mining and Railway Company in German South West Africa (today's Namibia) purchased two steam railcars built by MAN SE in cooperation with Maffei for 600 mm gauge.
[66] In 1911, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built a steam-powered railcar combining a Jacobs-Schupert boiler and a Ganz Works power truck in an American Car and Foundry body.
[67] The steam motor cars in North America reached their popular apex before the 1880s, with most fabricated to custom designs by small specialty builders before 1875. nearly all examples were unique and purpose-built to order; a few were experimental cars built and marketed by small firms or individuals on a trial basis and often not entirely successful due to their uniqueness or relative costs.
[69] There were a total of three steam railcars in South Africa, all imported from Britain and all running on the Cape gauge of 1,067 mm common there.
