Draisine

This article is about auxiliary railcars regardless of propulsion. For the original form powered by foot, see dandy horse.

Two-person rail-cycle draisine with four wheels, for leisure

A draisine (English: /dreɪˈziːn/) is a light auxiliary rail vehicle, driven by service personnel, equipped to transport crew and material necessary for the maintenance of railway infrastructure.

The eponymous term is derived from the German inventor Baron Karl Drais, who invented his Laufmaschine (German for "running machine") in 1817, which was called Draisine in German (vélocipède or draisienne in French) by the press. It is the first reliable claim for a practically used precursor to the bicycle, basically the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine, nicknamed hobby-horse or dandy horse.

Drais's dandy horse, called Draisine in German, whose name was inherited by the rail vehicle. (Drawing published in 1817.)

Later, the name draisine came to be applied only to the invention used on rails and was extended to similar vehicles, even when not human-powered. Because of their low weight and small size, they can be put on and taken off the rails at any place, allowing trains to pass.

In the United States, motor-powered draisines are known as speeders while human-powered ones are referred as handcars. Vehicles that can be driven on both the highway and the rail line are called road–rail vehicles, or (after a trademark) Hy-Rails.

Dressin, velorail, trolley, or railbike

Further information: Velocipede handcar

Basic railbike-draisine

"Draisines", called dressin in Swedish, dresin in Norwegian, dræsine in Danish, and resiina in Finnish, refers to pedal-powered rail-cycles which were used by railroad maintenance workers in Finland, Sweden, and Norway until about 1950, as handcars were elsewhere.

Leisure use and tourism

Draisines nowadays are used for recreation on several otherwise unused railway lines in Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Costa Rica, Sweden, Norway, Poland, North America and South Korea. In the United States, railbike tours have operated in several states: California, Maine, Oregon, the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and Delaware.

The form of draisine mostly used by the rental companies uses four medium-sized railway-type steel wheels - however free to rotate individually, with the rear ones driven by bicycle-type pedal arrangements mostly without gearing. These are mounted on moderately heavy steel frames with saddles and/or benches for usually two working riders and several passengers. As the lines are mostly single-track, passing involves one party lifting the draisine entirely off the track in order to let the other one pass. Alternatively no passing is allowed and the groups of tourists use the track in each direction during different time slots. Because of friction and gearing, speeds are limited to around 4 m/s, desirable for safety. At these speeds such constructions do not derail and the vehicles can be ridden closely spaced or connected. Typical operation is shown in a promotional video of a facility on parts of the Belgian Vennbahn.

For private use the available four-wheel draisines are too heavy. Home builders can use the other basic form, the actual rail bicycle. True rail bicycles balancing on one rail should be possible and have been patented but not it seems demonstrated, except for models using electric gyroscopes or reaction wheels. Therefore the rail cycles in use are actually tricycles consisting of a bicycle on one rail and an outrigger-roller on the other. The lateral stabilty against tipping to the outside is limited to the weight of the outrigger plus body-lean. The bicycle is guided by a mechanism keeping the front wheel exactly on the rail, sometimes guides are used on the rear wheel as well. Painful derailments can and do occur, especially on abandoned railways with rails in poor condition and/or overgrown tracks. As the tracks can be remote and discontinuous, railbikes must be convertible for use on roads and gravel.

Riding on such disused or seldomly used tracks is an unofficial form of touristic adventure sport especially in the USA, where thousands of miles of abandoned railroad routes still exist. A portal gives information, stories and pictures on this type of railbiking.

Competition and speed records

World record holding rail HPV at Laupen 2001

Speed trials for human-powered rail vehicles were held on the railway track between Laupen and Gümmenen in Switzerland in the years 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2001. These were advertised as world championships with the maximum speeds measured over a distance of 200 m as world records. Teams from Switzerland, Germany, France and Great Britain attended. Dick Smart brought his rail cycle from the USA in 1998 but did not race it, also Bernard and Françoise Magnoulouxtheir tandem railbike. The entries ranged from a rail-kickboard (18.5 km/h), a historic draisine from 1916 and a modern commercial draisine Valendaire (approximately 20 km/h, to specially built recumbent racing vehicles partially with aerodynamic fairings. Their speeds with fit non-athletes ranged from about 39 km/h (recumbent unfaired), 48 km/h (partially faired), 60-70 km/h (fully faired), to 74.5 km/h with athlete Hansueli Russenberger on Gridelli vehicle in 2001, the world record. The track was in good condition, straight and almost level, with a maximum run-up of 1.5 km.

Until 2007, Finland hosted an annual competition, Resiina-ralli (Draisine Rally), involving several draisine teams travelling for many days on the railways from one corner of the country to another.

Construction

People have been putting bicycles on railroad tracks ever since there have been both bicycles and railroads. From time to time, factory-built models have been available, beginning with a device marketed in 1908 through the Sears catalogue for just US$5.45 (equivalent to $191 in 2024).

There are many designs of draisine. However, certain fundamentals of railbike design must be adhered to, foremost among them the reconciliation of a bicycle's stability with adaptation to riding on a railway track. Simply adding flanged wheels to a conventional bicycle would make it impossible to balance, so the typical approach to stabilization is to add an outrigger, with roller(s), across to the second rail from near the bicycle’s rear wheel.

Practicality also commonly demands that the bicycle continue to be able to be ridden off rails, for the rider to travel to the tracks.

Types

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  Hand-lever draisine handcar
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  Functioning draisine
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  Three-wheeled draisine at the Saskatchewan Railway Museum exhibited by a railway history museum in Metelen, Germany
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  Combined pedal- and hand-driven railway bike in the museum of Khabarovsk Bridge, Russia
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  Pedaled four-wheel rail-cycle draisine
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  Purpose-built bicycle for riding the Hotchkiss Bicycle Railroad
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  Speeder is another term for a small motorized draisine.
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  Motorized draisines are known as speeders, trolleys, or “jiggers” in the United States and Canada.
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  Draisine for crew transport and railway track inspection in Namibia 2017

Automotive draisines

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  Jeep shunting empty coal hoppers, World War II
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  The "Big jeep" (or "Beep"), the WWII Dodge WC model, was also used for draisine duty.
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  Car (Russian GAZ-13 Chaika) converted into a railroad speeder, at the Hungarian Railway Museum
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  Ana Pauker's Škoda VOS up for display in the train Station of Sinaia
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  Deutsche Bundesbahn railroad speeder based on the Volkswagen Type 2

Military use

Armoured draisine Tatra T18 built in Czechoslovakia for Polish armed forces (1930s)

The military use of draisines concerned, first of all, armoured draisines. They were light armoured rail motor vehicles, intended for reconnaissance, scouting, track patrolling, and other auxiliary combat tasks, usually belonging to armoured trains. Early vehicles of this kind were built in Russia during World War I. Later, often armoured cars were used as armoured draisines, after exchanging their wheels to railroad ones, or fitting them with additional retractable railroad rollers. Some countries, however, manufactured purpose-built armoured draisines between the wars, such as the USSR and Czechoslovakia. Peculiar vehicles were Polish armoured draisines - they were tanks or tankettes fitted with special rail chassis, able to be used on rails or on the ground, leaving the rail chassis on the rails.

Some countries developed railtrack armoured draisines, with retractable railroad wheels; they were not widely used, however. Different armoured draisines were used during the Second World War, starting from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany.

Prior to World War II, the Japanese Empire had already made extensive use of draisines such as the Sumida M.2593 in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Sino-Japanese War. From 1952, the Wikham Armoured Trolley was used by British security forces during the Malayan Emergency.

See also

• Balance bicycle
• Handcar
• History of the bicycle
• Human-powered land vehicle
• Norry, improvised draisines used in Cambodia
• In the film Frog Dreaming (1986), the young protagonist builds and uses a railbike.
• Railbus
• Railroad speeder
• Railway Mokes
• Sail bogey
• Taiwanese push car railways

External links

Media related to Draisines at Wikimedia Commons

• Railriders Archived 2020-06-29 at the Wayback Machine Video produced by Oregon Field Guide