Talk:Pedrail wheel

Who Was Major Glasfurd Fighting?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedrail_wheel#World_War_I ". . . in June 1914, Major Glasfurd, who was fighting in France, proposed an idea for such a pedrail machine." The War didn't start until August. Or was he just always fighting? Hengistmate (talk) 14:46, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The Glasfurd Reference - Removed.
The reference to Glasfurd is a) mistaken and b) historically insignificant.

The reference links to Duncan John Glasfurd. Swinton is referring to Duncan's brother, Alexander Inglis Robertson Glasfurd. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/glasfurd-duncan-john-6396

"I discovered later that the author of this scheme, which had been suggested in June, was Major now Colonel, retd.) A.I.R. Glasfurd, of the Indian Army." Footnote, p.152. Eyewitness

The events to which Swinton refers took place in 1915, after he became involved with the Landships Committee, not 1914. That is clearly stated in pages 48-52 of Eyewitness. The passage therefore means that Swinton became aware of the proposal in October 1915 and later learned that it had been "submitted" (although he does not say to whom) in June of that year. That being the case, it is reasonable to assume that it was not thought of sufficient merit to be pursued. Swinton himself points out that Glasfurd's proposal, like Wells's "Land Ironclads", involved the use of Pedrail wheels, a technology that had already been rendered obsolete by the caterpillar track.

I am surprised that closer scrutiny of this passage has not been prompted by the assertion that a Glasfurd, whichever one it might have been, was "fighting in France" in June, 1914. It would be interesting to investigate whom he might have been fighting, since the War didn't start until August.

D.J. Glasfurd (1873-1916) was in the Middle East with the Australian Imperial Force until transferring to France in June 1916, and was KIA in November of that year.

A.I.R. Glasfurd (1870-1928) was an Indian Army officer who was sent to study the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War in southern Manchuria soon after the war ended. Many countries sent observers to study this war, and the high casualties caused by barbed wire, machine guns, and earthworks were widely reported. It is entirely likely that Glasfurd's thoughts would have returned to this when the scale of casualties in 1914 and 15 became apparent. However, he was by no means alone in this; the War Office received many hundreds of proposals for mechanical means of overcoming the conditions of trench warfare. S also says that the machine was intended to squirt poisonous liquids and carry machine guns, but that "no technical details of the vehicle were given."

I propose to remove the reference altogether, lest we create another Joseph Hawker (who, thanks to Wikipedia, is ubiquitously described as the inventor of the tank but was no such thing). Hengistmate (talk) 14:41, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Not Pedrails . ..
The wheels fitted to the Obice da 305/17 and Big Bertha weren't Pedrails, just footed wheels without the complex system of springs incorporated in the Pedrail system.Hengistmate (talk) 22:09, 16 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, the way the artice defines what a pedrail is, I must disagree with you. It certainly encompasses the simpler arrangements also.
 * I can see your point, but then the intro needs to be rewritten, and another "do not confuse with " link needs to be added.
 * Meanwhile have a few WWI pictures. Go ahead and move them to that other article you are going to link to.


 * See also: Radgürtel
 * --BjKa (talk) 15:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

WWI pictures: thanks, but no thanks.

The actual state of affairs is that the Pedrail Wheel was a thing. It was a type of sprung wheel patented by Bramah Diplock, and the company set up to manufacture it was called the Pedrail Transport Company. Initially, it wasn't a generic name, more of a trademark, and it was different from what the Germans call a Radgürtel (wheel belt), and the Italians a Cingolo Bonagente (Bonagente track), after Crispino Bonagente, an officer they claim invented the device in 1904 (although similar systems pre-dated it). The French called theirs chenilles Bonagente.Those wheels are unsprung.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cingolo_Bonagente

Diplock invented his first wheel in 1895 and patented it in 1899. A 1902 type followed. In The Land Ironclads, published in late 1903, H.G. Wells describes the Pedrail Wheel in detail. In the original publication, Strand magazine, the name appears twice, once with a capital P and once without. This might indicate that the word was already on its way to becoming generic, but the fact remains that the Pedrail Wheel and the Bonagente, etc are different things.

Which brings us to the Pedrail Machine. What seems to be accepted without any scrutiny is the fact that the Pedrail Machine didn't run on and wasn't in anyway dependent on Pedrail Wheels. It ran on an adaptation of the track designed by Diplock after he abandoned the Wheel, which he called the Chaintrack. The reason for calling this vehicle The Pedrail Machine is that it was designed by Murray Sueter "in conjunction with Diplock's Pedrail Transport Company of Fulham." (Fletcher, 2001, p31).

Here are some helpful sources:

https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/cingolo/

https://ww1photographs.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/bonagente/

https://ww1photographs.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/5544/

https://www.bulgarianartillery.it/Bulgarian%20Artillery%201/Equipment/Bonagente_wheels.htm

As you'll see, there are plenty of footed wheels but no Pedrails. I propose to edit this page so that it is about the Pedrail Wheel and not about other wheels. This extract from the article on the "Dreadnaught wheel" should help to illuminate:

''Some references[12] also use the term pedrail. The issue is further confused by Bottrill referring to his design as "ped-rail shoes".[13] The two concepts are similar in that they attempt to improve cross-country performance by spreading out the load on a flat surface. The difference is primarily in how the pads are connected; the dreadnaught wheel connects the pads to each other and ride along the wheel, whereas in the pedal arrangement, introduced in 1903, each pad is connected to a pivot on the wheel itself, and there are no inter-pad connections. Some pedrail systems also include internal suspensions to improve their performance over rough ground. Bottrill's design spans the definition, as its cable attachments are similar to the pedrail connections, albeit much more simple.''

Here are the principal objections to the current Pedrail article:

"Pedrail wheels may be simple systems with the feet connected to a rigid wheel." No, they may not. If they are, they're not Pedrail wheels.

"More complex systems including various built-in suspension systems were designed." If they were less complex, they weren't Pedrail wheels.

"Pedrail wheels were used on agricultural machinery and military all-terrain vehicles (especially gun carriages)" There doesn't seem to be any evidence of the Pedrail wheel being used for anything but demonstrations. They certainly weren't used on gun carriages; that's "dreadnaught" wheels.

"The pedrail wheel should not be confused with the likewise obsolete dreadnaught wheel." That's precisely what the article does at the moment.

And Big Bertha has no place here, since it used "dreadnaught" wheels (Radgürtel).

So we should eventually end up with an article about the Pedrail Wheel and not about something else. I trust I can look forward to your collaboration.

Btw, no one seems to have any idea why the dreadnaught wheel is so called or how and when it became so.

Hengistmate (talk) 11:46, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Pedrail confusion.
There is a conflation here of the Pedrail Wheel and the Pedrail endless track. They're not the same thing. The endless track was a later development. A small version of it was demonstrated to Winston Churchill, who then authorised experiments under the auspices of the Landships Committee. These led to the Pedrail Machine described in the article. There was no connection with the Pedrail Wheel. Hengistmate (talk) 08:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Irrelevant section.
The WWI section shouldn't be here. I'm sure the information it contains deserves a place somewhere - perhaps in the Bramah J. Diplock article - but it isn't here. The Diplock Wheel was a dead end and played no part in British tank development, and that's where the story ends. The Chaintrack took over, but this article isn't about the Chaintrack. There's an invitation in the article to learn about the Chaintrack, but the WWI section doesn't belong here. Hengistmate (talk) 15:06, 20 January 2017 (UTC)