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Railroad speeder
Small railcar for inspectors and work crews
Small railcar for inspectors and work crews
A speeder (also known as a section car, railway motor car, putt-putt, track-maintenance car, crew car, jigger, trike, quad, personnel carrier, trolley, inspection car, or draisine) is a small railcar used around the world by track inspectors and work crews to move quickly to and from work sites. Although slow compared to a train or car, it is called speeder because it is faster than a human-powered vehicle such as a handcar. Motorized inspection cars date back to at least 1895, when the Kalamazoo Manufacturing Company started building gasoline-engined inspection cars.
In the 1990s, many speeders were replaced by pickup trucks or sport utility vehicles with additional flanged wheels that could be lowered for travelling on rails, called "road–rail vehicles" or hi-rails for "highway-railroad". Speeders are collected by hobbyists, who refurbish them for excursions organized by the North American Railcar Operators Association in the U.S. and Canada and the Australian Society of Section Car Operators, Inc. in Australia.
Motorcar manufacturers and models
| United States | Canada |
|---|
Various railways and their workshops also manufactured speeders. Often these were a copy of commercially available cars, such as Wickham and Fairmont.
Dimensions
Approximate dimensions of a common speeder car are given below. Due to the variety of base models and customization these are not fixed numbers. These values are from a Fairmont A4-D.
- Rail gauge: (56.5 inches)
- Weight: 3500 lb
- Width: 64 in
- Height: 60 in
- Length: 9 ft (~110 inches)
- Wheel diameter: 16 in
- Floor height: 80–120% of the wheel diameter; 11 in-17 in
In popular culture
Sandy from Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go is an anthropomorphic rail speeder.
Gallery
File:Yeppoon.jpg|Former Queensland Rail (Australia) speeders File:Wickham trolley at Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre.jpg|A former UK MOD railway engineering personnel carrier (Wickham trolley) File:South Australian Railways -- Dort motor inspection car at Islington workshops, ca 1924.jpg|Dort tourer modified by the South Australian Railways in the 1920s to be a motor inspection car File:GAZ-13 Chaika draisine.jpg|Russian GAZ-13 Chaika car converted to a speeder, preserved at the Hungarian Railway Museum File:VW T1-BD 20-5031.JPG|Deutsche Bundesbahn speeder based on the Volkswagen Type 2 light commercial vehicle File:Metrotrolley.jpg|A battery-powered ultrasonic rail flaw detector trolley made at the Centre For Advanced Transport Engineering and Research, Western Australia
Notes
References
References
- "FAQ's & Answers". NARCOA.
- (28 June 1895). "Miscellaneous items". The Neenah Daily Times.
- [http://www.narcoa.org NARCOA website]
- [Gunner, K., Kennard, M. 2004 ''The Wickham Works List'' Dennis Duck Publishing page?]
- [https://www.wplives.org/mow_pages/pdf/Fairmont_Car_Guide.pdf A-4]
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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