 other engineering ideas. The simplicity and widespread adoption of conventional wheel arrangements rendered the Steam Horse obsolete.
Another early example of unconventional railway engineering addressed the safety of trains during collisions, a regular occurrence in the nineteenth century due to ineffective brakes and rudimentary signalling systems. This system proposed putting large woollen bags between the carriages and at the ends of trains to act as a shock absorber in the event of a crash. It was hoped that these bags would supersede sprung buffers as these were expensive to manufacture. The system acts on the same principle as fenders that protect a boat whilst mooring.
The inventor, Mr. Burrell, doesn’t offer any engineering credentials and the design seems to have been submitted on his initiative, demonstrating the energetic entrepreneurialism and fever for technological innovation that was generated by the early railways. Despite the safety benefits that this solution offered it was never implemented in practice as far as we are aware.
A train with wheels on the outside of the track may seem strange today but in the 1840s and 50s it was an everyday occurrence for commuters on their way into Paris.
This line was unique for using the Arnoux system which was invented by Jean-Claude-Republicain Arnoux in an attempt to allow trains to travel around much tighter curves than was possible at the time. The way he achieved this was by pivoting each axle of the carriages in the centre so they could freely follow the curves. Each axle also had four guide wheels, two for each wheel, set at right angles to keep the track in line with it. As well as the carriage, the locomotives for the railway also used a similar system whereby the front and rear wheels had a similar set up to the carriage while the driving wheels where flangeless. This allowed them to slide across the top of the track as the train went round the sharper corners, sometimes requiring an extra track on the inside to prevent derailing.
It was hoped that this could be used to reduce the cost of the building railways as major work wouldn’t be needed to build gentler curves. Despite its early success at doing this the system failed partly due to its unique gauge, 5ft 8 ¾ was needed to allow space for the guide wheels and the invention of the bogie in the 1850s allowed conventional trains to negotiate similarly tight curves. Although the Arnoux system continued to be used for a short time it was abandoned in the late 1860s when the company was taken over by the Paris-Orleans Railway and the track converted to standard gauge. Much of the route is now part of the Paris suburban railway, the RER.
Whilst most railways were designed with the train’s wheels firmly on the ground, a Scottish inventor, George Bennie came up with the idea for railway in the sky in the 1920s. Bennie’s Railplane was a suspended railway that was driven by propellers. It was conceived as a low-cost means of separating slow-moving freight and passenger rail traffic as Bennie saw congestion as a threat to the future viability of the railways. The Railplane gantry was to be erected above a conventional rail line or road and would allow passengers to travel safely, swiftly and commodiously. This meant the conventional railways could operate a greater volume of freight traffic which was an area of their business that they were losing to road haulage firms.
A test track was constructed over the LNER line in Milngavie and it opened to much fanfare in 1929, even hosting a delegation of LNER officials. However Bennie’s funding soon ran out as orders did not materialise. Several outlandish schemes were proposed, including a Railplane link between London and Paris (the Channel crossing was to be made by seaplane) and even a Railplane connection between Baghdad and Damascus. Bennie’s concept didn’t take off as its novelty and impracticality prevented its wider adoption. However another suspended railway, the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn in Germany, has proved more successful and is still in use today.
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