Talk:Railmotor

Railmotor article

Railmotor is a fairly distinct term for a steam railcar, used by the Great Western Railway and some other British railways. I think it is appropriate to have an article for it, separate from Railcar, so I intend to write one. Biscuittin 13:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC) Done. Biscuittin 15:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Image

What was wrong with this one, please?--Old Moonraker (talk) 06:52, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see: the editor has retired. Restoring. --Old Moonraker (talk) 06:57, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually no, it's because it's a crappy scan and the caption is probably wrong (not Taff Vale Railway) Andy Dingley (talk) 14:23, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll leave it up to you. --Old Moonraker (talk) 14:45, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Might as well leave it in. It's certainly a "British steam railmotor" and we don't have anything else to go there. I would have pulled it until I could either verify or fix the caption, but I've rather lost the enthusiasm for accurate content of late, it seems such a niche interest 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 18:09, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Expanding this article

I have added some background, but this article still needs some work on it. Imho we need some more references from books, some more images, and some more mechanical detail. There are also some alarming logical jumps in the text too.Afterbrunel (talk) 11:36, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Split

I think the article is confused, it had British and UK all over it but we have Australian and Irish examples in the table. I suggest two articles, Railmotor that discusses the technology of steam railcars (title could change) and British railmotor that discusses the history of railmotors in Britain. Edgepedia (talk) 15:34, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

• oppose What benefit would this convey? The history of UK railmotors is as much about exports from UK makers as about service on the UK lines. Nor is there substantial commonality between the pre-Grouping UK lines using them. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Andy, perhaps you can help my confusion. Is the CPH railmotor an export? And where do we discuss the de:Dampftriebwagen and fr:Automotrice à vapeur ? Edgepedia (talk) 17:48, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

"Railmotor" literally should cover the steam and early petrol railmotors, probably in one article, although there could easily be three articles here, for railmotors, steam railmotors and petrol railmotors. All of these are notable as topics.

The reason to split petrol railmotors from diesel railcars is that the early petrol engines were experimental and low-powered. They used car engines, there being little else to use, and so just didn't have the power to operate a railway railcar. Instead they had to use novel lightweight construction techniques, ranging from "buses on flanged wheels" to ultra-light railcars. Normal framing (and the ability to be coupled into a regular train) was omitted, and 4 wheel chassis were used rather than bogies. The last, and largest of these, would be the McKeen railmotors.

A major distinction with "railmotors" and "railbuses", as opposed to "railcars", is that railmotors are stand-alone, rather than multiple units. Although the Galloping Geese hauled trailers and the Irish narrow-gauge ones pulled anything that could be tied behind, railcars can't be coupled within a train (i.e. both hauled, and hauling trailers) as the framing and buffing gear just isn't up to the task.

In the 1930s we see the first real railcars, with the many German designs and the GWR's AEC 'flying bananas'. These used the first high-speed diesel engines (I really need to finish writing that) and now had enough power that they could be built according to established railway practice and standards of strength. The rest, even to today, is largely a development of engines and control gear for multiple working.

The CPH railmotors are, AIUI, the same as many commonwealth designs: locally built framing, produced in carriage workshops not loco workshops, with engines and transmissions exported from the UK, US or Germany. This is one reason why we see so many innovative construction techniques involved: welded underframes rather than riveted, and even monocoque bodies or entire unibody chassis. Carriage workshops weren't wedded to building things from riveted plate in the way that loco workshops were.

For de:Dampftriebwagen and fr:Automotrice à vapeur, these seem to cover the same scope as steam railmotor (I know nothing of specific French or German railmotor designs, before the diesels). If there are notable types within these, we could of course add them too.

Andy Dingley (talk) 19:05, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I changed the tag say what I meant to say in the first place. I was looking for an article on British steam railcars and this seemed to be it. However, I think we're agreed it's not, although it contains some information that would go into such an article. According to Tufnell seventeen railways built these in 1905 and together with the origins in the 1850s and the revival on the LNER in the 1920s these would all fit together. I see that the L&YR, Taff Vale, GWR and the LNER would need individual articles, but seventeen would, I think, be overkill.

I can see a need for a steam railcar article, but I haven't the sources to write one. It seems that these were used all over the world, for example according to it:Automotrice_Purrey 40 were in use in Paris in 1903. However, I have a book coming and the notes I made over the weekend on the British examples.

Edgepedia (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I think I'll start the article from stratch. I'll ping here when I make it live. Edgepedia (talk) 17:46, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Go for it. There's enough scope in any of these topics that they could work. I'd love to see something on the LNER steam railcars too. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:08, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I going to busy for the next few days, so I've published British steam railcars, as far as I've got. I need to go on about the Sentinels and Claytons introduced in the 1920s. As a result of the discussion above I've re-purposed this article to talk about Railmotors in general, and although I haven't removed any information its possible to use a {{main}} template and refer to the new article. Edgepedia (talk) 07:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Duplication

First of all let me pay tribute to the excellent work that has been done in the last few months in this field. There's a lot of first-class text now.

However I am uncomfortable that there is a lot of overlap; we have Railmotor, British Steam Railcars, Steam Railcar (ok ... international) and GWR Steam Rail Motors, as well as several articles on specific types. (Incidentally, BR Western Region referred to a 14XX plus auto-trailer as a "rail motor" as well, e.g. in the working timetable for the Chalford service.)

Is there any appetite for a rationalisation of all this? Afterbrunel (talk) 06:20, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

That would be a useful improvement. The trouble is though, there doesn't seem to be any accepted external taxonomy of types that we can simply borrow as a model.

I would suggest the following:

• Take an engineering view, not an etymological one. If railfoos are different from railbaas (they date from after the invention of the square wheel) then have two articles on Railfoo] and Railbaa. Ignore the aspect (at least for article scope and naming, but discuss it in the body) that railfoos didn't appear in Germany until after the railbaa and that the German term for railbaa was wollmilchsau anyway.
• Take a broad view across steam, petrol and diesel traction. If there is a crossover between single-unit railbuses powered by steam or IC, then merge them. If they're distinct, then separate them. If there were multi-unit rakes powered by steam (not AFAIK), then include these with the 1930s diesel rakes.
• Decide on the set of overall types (this is easy and it's best done in isolation from the top down, not from the bottom-up by over-studying specific examples). What mattered in the history of railcars? What were the big innovatory steps?

Note that I don't see the previously suggested "railmotors" and "British railmotors" as a useful distinction here.

• Build one overall article as an index, use lots of {{more}} links and don't be afraid to duplicate content into it. This isn't paper.
• Build two streams of articles: railfoos in principle (i.e. railbus vs multiple-unit) and also types by model. We can easily justify two articles, even if this means that such important types as Flying Bananas and Flying Hamburgers are effectively covered twice.

Andy Dingley (talk) 09:50, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Railmotor vs railcar

Reading the 2 articles railmotor and railcar, I can't tell the difference between them.  Stepho  talk  13:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Railmotors are always steam. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:56, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply but the first sentence of the railmotor article means steam or diesel or petrol.  Stepho  talk  09:05, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I think the first sentence is wrong. Railmotor is always with steam. Railcar can also be petrol, diesel or battery. At least as far as I know. Bernhard Rieger (talk) 10:00, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

A bit of web searching found the following mentions of railmotor:

1. CPH railmotor - Australian petrol powered.
2. https://www.trms.org.au/ - Australian petrol powered.
3. https://www.gulflander.com.au/Pages/Railmotors.aspx - Australian petrol powered, based on buses.
4. http://www.victorianrailways.net/motive%20power/aec/aec.html - Australian petrol powered, based on AEC buses.

I also note that the railcar article has mostly American examples and the railmotor article has mostly British/Commonwealth examples. Is it possible that they are merely British vs American terms for the same thing?  Stepho  talk  10:30, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The term "railcar" is used in the UK for petrol and diesel vehicles, and occasionally steam - the only common usage that I know of for steam is with the steam railcars built from 1923 onward by Sentinel or Clayton. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:37, 24 May 2022 (UTC)