User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/Renard Road Train

The Renard Road Train was a road train invented in France c1902 by Colonel Charles Renard. It consisted of a tractor unit and a number of six-wheeled steerable trailers. Drive was transmitted to each trailer's centre axle through a series of cardan shafts from a power take-off at the rear of the tractor. The system could be adapted to haul fare-paying passengers or freight. It was sold and used all over the world as a road-going alternative to regular train services, albeit at a maximum speed of around 12 miles per hour.

It was manufactured in France by MM. Surcouf et Compagnie from 1903 to 1911, and in the UK (chiefly for export) by Daimler from 1907 to 1913. Daimler developed a six-cylinder version of their Daimler-Knight engine for the road train, later variants of which powered the Daimler-Foster agricultural and artillery tractors, and the first British tanks.

Design

 * Techno stuff

Engines
France Various engines were used to power the road train. The first tractor units were made by Darracq. Other early French models used a Filtz 4-cylinder 75hp engine made in Levallois-Perret, a western suburb of Paris. This motor had twin horizontal pistons driving twin vertical crankshafts geared to a central shaft with a horizontal flywheel, with a belt drive to the 4-speed gearbox. It was also used in Turgan-Foy cars. These Filtz geared engines were prone to load shocks which damaged the teeth on the gears, leading to reliability problems.

A French-built version of the road train exhibited at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition at White City, London used a 40 hp Abeille, made in Saint-Quentin, Aisne. The technical director of Renard was Frédéric Airault who—like the designer of Abeille engines, Adolphe de Mesmay—had also previously worked at the fr:Société française de constructions mécaniques (SFCM), also based in Saint-Quentin.

Britain Daimler (recovering from bankruptcy in 1904) began manufacturing the Daimler-Renard road train from 1907. In their 1908 model they fitted one of their own 4-cylinder engines. With four separate cylinders (bore x stroke 185mm x 150mm) and conventional poppet valves, at 5 miles an hour it ran at 700 rpm with a top speed of about 12 miles an hour.

Daimler had become interested from c1907 in a new engine designed by the American Charles Knight: with Frederick Lanchester as a consultant, they developed a series of highly successful Daimler-Knight engine double sleeve-valve engines which were to power all Daimler cars and commercial vehicles until the 1930s. The first 'Silent Knight' engines were first announced in September 1908, and in 1910 a Daimler-Renard road train was announced with a six-cylinder, 80 h.p. Daimler-Knight engine with a single half-speed crankshaft driving both inlet and exhaust sleeve-valves. The train pulled up to four wagons.

Further engine development
BSA bought Daimler in September 1910, who started work on a Daimler-Foster agricultural tractor, with the 75-80 hp engine originally located behind the the rear axle. This was developed by early 1912 into a 100 hp engine (150x150mm) with inlet and exhaust sleeve-valves driven by separate crankshafts. With a new cylinder head design it produced 105 hp, and powered the Daimler-Foster Artillery Tractors which hauled the BL 15-inch howitzer, and the British Tanks Mk. I to IV in 1916 and 1917.

France
The Renard Road Train was invented by Charles Renard, a colonel in the French Army and dirigible pilot. He had previously invented a system of preferred numbers; a high-capacity electric battery; a method for producing and storing hydrogen gas; improvements to torpedo boats; the captive observation balloon, the meteorological balloon, and a theory of heavier-than-air flight. He commanded the fr:aérostation at Chalais-Meudon, where he built the airship La France in fr:Hangar Y.

The road train was manufactured by Édouard Surcouf, another keen airship pilot, in his factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb west of the centre of Paris. Trials were held in 1904 in Remiremont and in the Vosges, east central France. Renard died suddenly (possible suicide) in his laboratory in April 1905. Nevertheless, a number of companies were set up to provide regular passenger and freight services using Renard road trains.
 * La Société Vosgienne des trains Renard (Remiremont-Plombières), (headed up by a Monsieur Bernard), conducted trials in 1904 and 1907.
 * La Compagnie des trains Renard Breton (Lamballe-Saint-Brieuc)
 * La Compagnie des trains Renard de la Loire (Roanne-Thizy)
 * La Compagnie des trains Renard du Cher (Nérondes-Blet)
 * La Compagnie des trains Renard du Boulonnais (Wimereux-Cap Gris-Nez, and Rouen-Dieppe). This was the longest-lived regional company, in existence from 1906 to 1914.

Renard's brother and former adjutant, Commandant fr:Paul Renard, and Surcouf who owned the patents, formed the Société française des trains Renard in 1907, with a capital of 1,750,000 francs in 1750,000 shares of 100 francs each. The technical director was Frédéric Airault, previously a co-director of Buchet since 1903.

A British company, the Renard Road & Rail Transport Corporation, was set up in March 1907 (see below). A number of test passenger services serving Annonay in the Vosges department took place in June 1907.

Airault left in 1909 to be the technical director of CGT (later Air France), founded by Louis Blériot, the industrialist Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe and Surcouf.

The Société des trains Renard ended operations in 1911 in the face of increased competition from the railways.

Britain

 * Renard Road & Rail Transport Corp. (1907-1913)
 * Daimler Company

Manufacture of Renard train & sole selling rights for Britain and Ireland, all British colonies, Italy & S. America.

Australia
A number of Renard Road Trains were imported to Australia.

Operators
Renard road trains were used in the following countries: • Austria / Hungary

• Australia

• Burma

• Canary Islands

• Egypt

• Canada

• France

• India

• Iran (Teheran-Rasht)

• Jamaica

• Manchuria

• Netherlands

• Paraguay

• South Africa

• Spain, inc. Barcelona.

• Turkey Other interested governments included Ceylon, Natal (now part of South Africa), Queensland, Russia and Tasmania.