Bugatti railcars

[velotrain]

I came across this well-done site in my wanderings.

 

http://retours.eu/en/23-autorail-bugatti/#

[cteno4]

Nicely done site and interesting content.

 

jeff

[scotspensioner]

The Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNE R in Britain saw one of these railcars and copied the end design which he modified to carry out wind tunnel tests for a proposed steam hauled express train to run between London and Newcastle.This was delivered as the Silver Jubilee and the Locomotives were the famous A4 class locos..Gresley was on friendly terms with Andre Chapelon and the Kylchap blast pipe used on these locos came by that means.

So one of the most iconic British trains had some of its best known details taken from designs of French origin

[velotrain]

With some Finnish help - from Wiki:

 

"The Kylchap steam locomotive exhaust system was designed and patented by French steam engineer André Chapelon, using a second-stage nozzle designed by the Finnish engineer Kyösti Kylälä and known as the Kylälä spreader; thus the name KylChap for this design."

[scotspensioner]

Agreed!

[rbauma03]

Thanks for sharing. After reading about the Bugatti I found the home button and the rest of the site has some fantastic content.

[velotrain]

And some members might like to know that the site is also available in Dutch - Nederlandse versie

 

http://retours.eu/en/

[kvp]

I just read the history page and this Bugatti railcar reminds me of the Hungarian built Aamot (Arpad) dmu-s designed in the same year (1933). Not with two 4 axle bogies and 4 engines, but a single self contained two axle diesel bogie (220 hp) and another trailer bogie under each car. Fully skirted, but not extremly streamlined, with traditional front driver positions and the same central slanted windscreen arrangement found on modern locomotives. Unlike the Bugatti-s they were in passenger service until around 1975 (the last one finishing in cross border branchline service) and there is still an operational unit as a museum train. In 2009, the new obb railjets managed to provide the same high speed service on the Budapest-Vienna line as the old dmu-s did in 1934.

[Nick_Burman]

On 10/6/2017 at 3:00 PM, scotspensioner said:

The Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNE R in Britain saw one of these railcars and copied the end design which he modified to carry out wind tunnel tests for a proposed steam hauled express train to run between London and Newcastle.This was delivered as the Silver Jubilee and the Locomotives were the famous A4 class locos..Gresley was on friendly terms with Andre Chapelon and the Kylchap blast pipe used on these locos came by that means.

So one of the most iconic British trains had some of its best known details taken from designs of French origin

 

In fact Gresley and Ettore Bugatti were very good friends. At a time when there was much discussion about which kind of aerodynamic shape (horizontal wedge - like the Bugatti railcars - or vertical - like the PRR T1 class locomotives) Bugatti convinced Gresley that a horizontal wedge was the best alternative.

 

Cheers NB