Transporter wagon

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A transporter wagon, in railway terminology, is a wagon (UK) or railroad car (US) designed to carry other railway equipment. Normally, it is used to transport equipment of a different rail gauge. In most cases, a transporter wagon is a narrow gauge wagon for transporting standard gauge equipment, allowing freight in standard gauge wagons to reach destinations on the narrow gauge network without the expense and time of transshipment into narrow gauge wagons.

A standard gauge freight car on a narrow gauge transporter wagon.

This is an attempt to overcome one of the primary problems with a narrow gauge system—gauge incompatibility. However, it means that the narrow gauge network must be built to a loading gauge large enough to accommodate standard gauge equipment, negating one of the cost advantages of narrow gauge construction. Additionally, a large standard gauge wagon balanced on a narrow gauge transporter wagon is not very stable, and is generally restricted to low speeds of 15 mph or so.

Transporter wagons have seen varying popularity. They were quite common on German and some Swiss narrow gauge systems; a transporter wagon is a Rollwagen in German. Transporter wagons were uncommon in North America, where the practice of exchanging trucks was more common, as was at one time the case on CN's Newfoundland Railway at Port aux Basques (or at North Sydney, Nova Scotia?). They were used on the Paw Paw Railroad of Paw Paw, Michigan for a short time, and on a short stretch of track of the defunct Bradford, Bordell and Kinzua Railroad by lumberman Elisha Kent Kane.

1 Transporter flatcar
2 Transporter trailer
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Transporter flatcar

During an intermediate phase of the conversion of the Port Pirie to Marree railway from narrow gauge to standard gauge, train lengths of standard gauge flat wagons were fitted with narrow gauge rails, to allow narrow gauge coal trains to by pass the difficult Flinders Ranges. The narrow gauge vacuum brakes were connected to the standard gauge train air brakes, to allow some flexing around curves (Why? The narrow gauge wagons, would they not simply be properly tied down (secured) on the standard gauge flatcars and would that not be the end of it?). There are no tight overbridges (overpasses) or tunnels to resrict operation of these double deck trains.

Transporter wagons were used extensively for a great many years also in Austria (gauge 760 mm) and Sweden (gauges 802 mm, 891 mm, and 1067 mm). This was a boon esp. to exchange traffic on the extensive Swedish 891 mm network, which once comprised almost 2,000 km - in fact a number of local country areas in southern Sweden had nearly no std.ga. lines at all, just n.g. ones. O t o h, "Rollböcken" were not much used there.

An interesting development of the original transporter wagon concept (w. bar couplers between each wagon) was that the bar couplers were discarded in favour of connecting all std. ga. wagons directly with each other by means of their ordinary buffing and draft gear. This was tried for a few years in Sweden just before the last n.g. freight lines were closed in the 1980s.

Special adaptors could be employed to couple a set of transporter wagons onto the end of an "ordinary" n.g. freight train. Continuous braking was no problem, either, as the train air line could be incorporated into the bar couplers, too.

Judging from early literature, the transporter wagon idea came about in Germany sometime around 1880 or 1890 (where in fact, later, "Rollböcken" were used a lot more than transporters). Transporter wagons with the unique "Heberlein" type friction brake system were in daily use in the old GDR (East Germany) well into the late 1980s.

[edit] Transporter trailer

Also common on German and eastern European narrow gauge are transporter trailers, which are small-wheeled full trailers that fit beneath each pair of the wagon's wheels or each bogie of the rail car and are hauled by a drawbar. These are Rollböcke in German. Some times one long small-wheeled full trailer carries the entire rail car.

In Britain, they were used on the Leek and Manifold Light Railway.