La Remorquer a Vapeur
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- čas přidán 7. 12. 2022
- Built by Charles Dietz in 1834 his Remorquer a Vapeur (literally a steam tug or steam tractor) was one of the earliest and indeed most succesful of early road steamers. Following in the footsteps of his father who had inaugurated a steam road service between Brussels and Anvers, Charles began regular steam service began between Paris and St Germaine en Laye in September 1834, and between Paris and Versailles the following year. Sporting a horiztonal locomotive boiler, large diameter driving wheels at the rear with rubber treads, Dietz Remorquer combined many of the features which would become part of the 'Classic' Traction Engine.
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The tricycle design reminds me of early 20th century tractors! Many tractor manufacturers, from Case, to Farm-all, to John Deere, and many more utilized a similar design for their tractors!
It’s amazing how innovative some people were in the early days of steam vehicles, wether it’s land, sea or rail. And it’s equally amazing that most of these early vehicles were so mechanically sound that they could be used in a scheduled service.😊
Dont forget in the air, too czcams.com/video/eivHYxDIJUc/video.html
Once again fascinating, must take some digging, to uncover these lost gems.
Another fantastic bit of story telling.
Merry Christmas when it comes Anthony and a happy new year.
Same to you!
Anthony always has a story to tell with these weird looking locomotives.
I had as a kid a mamod stationary steam engine, it too had a a oscillating cylinder. It's was epic in is operation, I can only imagine what tjise huge cylinders would've looked like in operation. Thanks for the vid.
A rather interesting video, the closest you can get to something like this in Australia (where I live) would be the old steam trams of Sydney (excluding traction engines of course) but they still run on rails; so this concept is quite new to me especially considering I live in Western Australia where trams were almost always electric (not including the Leonora tramway or the original WAGR S class from the GSR). So a very informative video, glad I watched it!
That is a beutiful old road engine.
We sometimes forget that steam was introduced so early into road transport. And not just roads or rail. As I am sure you already know the first steam powered boat predates the Battle of Trafalgar. In fact there was a plan to attack the Franco-Spanish fleet using steam powered boats towing fireship. The plan was abandoned as the technology was not quite there plus fireships are a notoriously difficult weapon to use.
The first road race between self propelled vehicles in Wisconsin was In the 1860s, sponsored by the state legislature. The entrants were basically traction engines for hauling cargo. At that time it was still a bit unclear if canals , railroads or roads would be best for transport, and each had their faction promoting them.
Ironically the first Steam Boat had been invented by the Marquis Jouffroy d'Abbans in the 1780s. He also invented the multi-tubular boiler.
@@Wiencourager Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten about that. A road race between traction engines. You wouldn't need a stopwatch for that would you.
The poor state of the roads in Britain was what encourage canal building in England. Roads were more like dirt tracks. So very dusty in summer and muddy in winter. Amd full of potholes all year round. So they built canals to replace them.
The problem was that the canals had a monopoly and proved very expensive, the Liverpool Manchester Ship Canal proving one of the worst and effected the cotton trade. This is why the first true railway ran between Liverpool and Manchester.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Thanks Anthony. I was aware of a steam boat running on a Scottish canal before Trafalgar but not of anything which predates it. And that rocket was a multi-tube boilered engine, though thinking about it now I seem to remember something about it not being the first.
I was going to mention about reinventing the wheel but as it now looks like it was invented and reinvented about five times in different times and places it's maybe not the best example.
@@bigblue6917 Jouffroy d'Abbans had used a horizontal mutli tubular fire tube boiler in his steam boat in the 1780s and Marc Seguin applied one to his locomotive of 1829 having made a scale model of it and carried out numerous experiments from at least 1826. Quite whether Henry Booth who designed the of Rocket is not clear, but the two are very similar. There had of course been multi tubular water tube boilers as well.
Interesting
I very much enjoy this era I'd steam technology where no one really had a frame of reference for what a loco ’had' to look like/function
wonderful
Very interesting to hear what other countries were doing in the early days of steam transport.
When the railways became the major steam transport I wonder if farming didn't take up steam vehicles such as self propelled traction engines only because horse power was seen to be much cheaper?
In Britain there was massive opposition to road steam in rural areas from Conservative/Tory MPs who didn't want them in the countryside and local frarmers, carters and drovers who believed road locomotives scared horses, blocked the narrow country roads and damaged them. Many Towns and Parishes banned Road Locomotives. It lead to all sorts of draconian bye laws banning locomotives or locomotives moving only by night and so forth, and the infamous red flag act. Steam rollers were quite an early adoption for road making and they too were impacted by the various Acts of Parliament. It's only really after the 1890s you get development of road locomotives and road haulage taking off.
Another fascinating early early innovator alongside Cugnot, and indeed another engineer that I had only rarely heard of. It's rather surprising to me that even after the advent of the railways made passenger traffic impractical, that Dietz didn't seek opportunities to continue his steam road haulage with freight.
Moreover, I'm surprised at how little English-language information there appears to be on the development of steam technology in France. For instance, I had never heard that France never adopted the Red Flag Act and thus was a free haven for steam road locomotion. The popular narrative, at least as I've seen it, seems to have been that the French were by nature intensely conservative and simply did not take well to new technologies like steam power. Likewise, much of French railway development was hampered by powerful canal and barge barons who opposed the new competition. How much of this is poppycock?
Finally, also on the conspiracy tinfoil hat side, I've also heard that a major proponent of the Red Flag Act in Britain were actually the railway companies themselves who saw the early steam carriages of Goldsworthy Gurney and Walter Hancock as a real threat; though the average passenger train of the late 1830's could still attain roughly double the speed of a steam carriage, there was fear that the carriages, especially operating en masse, could run a more frequent, and thus more convenient, and more importantly a cheaper service than the railways. In particular, I've seen it noted that Daniel Gooch of the Great Western Railway lobbied strongly for the Red Flag Act to shut down steam coach competition on the London to Bristol route. Is there any truth to these claims, or were railways unconcerned? Frankly, it seems like the railways missed a trick in not incorporating steam carriages into their business as an alternative to connecting every village with its own costly branchline, much as they would do with the motor charabancs of the early 20th Century.
Gosh...that's a lot to unpack.
So in France development of steam technology was in two distinct phases. The first in the 1770s and early 1780s when you have Cugnot developing his Farider and the Marquis Jouffroy d'Abbans inventing not only the steam boat but the multi-tubular boiler. The major problems facing those two were the politics of the Royal Court and that following the cessation of the American Revolution, France was broke.
Prior to the French Revolution there was a massive interchange of ideas and indeed individuals crossing the channel.
Despite Napoleon starting a massive road and canal building programme during his time as Emperor, and even promting a seven railway lines radiating from Paris to the channel ports and major towns and to the frontier, the railway scheme foundered. Napoleon wanted to kick start the French economy from essentially medieval to Industrial and lacked the time and the resources (France was broke).
After Napoleon the Bourbon monarchy came back. They saw *anything* which had developed under the Republic or Empire with deep suspicion - even gas lit streets in Paris! Technical education had radidly developed in France - particularly Paris - under the Republic and Empire with establishment of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, the Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole des Mines, the creation of a separate Ecoles des Ponts et Chaussees (originally part of the Ecole des Mines since the 1740s) etc etc. But the restored Bourbon Monarchy - put back on his throne thanks to the money and armaments of Britain - put control of education back into the hands of the Catholic Church and education was to be about loyalty to the King and the Faith: so anything which challenged that was not welcome shall we say.
Despite this, people like Marc Seguin are tinkering away with railways, steam boats and railway locomotives (1826-1829) and there's renewed exhcnage of ideas and technology. But France imposed whopping tarrifs on any imported machinery, up to 50% of its value. Britain too, imposed heavy export tarrifs, which meant it was only possible in certain circumstances to import new technology: that is if the importer did so as a scientific model to be dismantled and studied and wouldnt take out a French patent on it.
July 1830 the Bourbon Monarchy falls. They're replaced not by a Republic but by.... another Monarchy under Louis Philippe d'Orleans from the junior branch of the Royal Family. He's a liberal! He wants to modernise! He has government ministers like Guizot who wants everyone to get rich. There's also Adolphe Thiers as Minister of the Interior who thinks the railway is merely a toy for rich Parisians. Idiot. But under this "July Monarchy" from 1832 onwards the French Railway industry massively expands. France industry expands. The basis of a French National Network comes along with a Law of 1842.
So how were French railways built? It was the role of teh Government, via the Minister of Interior and the Ministry of Ponts ets Chaussees (Bridges and Roads) to identify key strategic routes. A private company would then be invited to tender to build, or build and operate the route for a set period of time: usually 99 years. This meant that say, unlike in Britain, where the railway network expanded chaotically and messily with lots of competing companies, the French network was more compact. Didn't really have the problem of "not in my backyard" and ran trains over the most direct route from Point A to Point B. Departement and Regional government also played a role in promoting and supporting minor railways as feeders to the mainline (basically as light railways, usually to Metre Gauge) to open up and develop the poor rural parts of France.
1848 Louis Philippe gets toppled. Louis-Napoleon proclaimed president of a Republic. 1852 he becomes Napoleon III and the French economy skyrockets and by the 1860s has over taken that of Britain. It then all goes horribly wrong in 1870. But Napoleon III 'grouped' all the minor little tiddly railway companies in to the six 'Great' Companies in 1858 (Nord, Est, Ouest, Paris-Orleas, Midi, PLM) with a monopoly in the geographical area they served rather like the LNER, SR, LMS GWR in Britain after 1923. Which means that they can get on developing their system and service and not compet with another company.
The Locomotive Act (1861) and Red Flag Act (1865) were promoted by rural, largely Tory MPs and the rural interest. This was because road locomotives were thought to badly damage country roads and terrify horses. Horses were still the prime movers on roads.At this period, roads in rural areas were maintained either by the Parish or the Local Board. And in towns they were administered by the Town Council. They had a lot of power and in many cases before the 1861 Act banned road locomotives during the hours of daylight or in towns completely. Many Tory MPs thought them noisy, dangerous, smoky things which had no place trundling through the countryside or through the more genteel parts of town. Then there was the association of drunkenness with traction engine drivers and in particular the great worry surrounding the itinerant ploughing teams or threashing teams who would travel about the countryside with their engine and thresher or ploughing set: they were seen little better than the railway navvies were (loud, uncouth, drunkards). So it was quite a rural thing: engines scaring horses. Engines blocking narrow roads or making smoke and smells. Perception of the people associated with the engines. The Red Flag Act directly arose from various local Banning Orders and bye laws implemented to prevent the passage of road engines. In many ways the Red Flag Act was a sensible compromise: road locomotives only allowed to move at a slow speed, proceeded by a man with a red flag 100 yards in front and to make major movements at night. It meant that Parishes and Town Councils could no longer ban engines, or engines moving by day so that a ploughing set could trundle perfectly legally by day from one field to another. As to road haulage, well that would have to wait for the 1870s to get going, and particularly in the 1890s with the raising of the naitonal speed limit. But that, as they say, is another story.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Wow. My hat's off to you once again, sir! I was certainly not expecting a potted episode script for a response. But I thank you deeply for deigning to grant such massive insight into the topic.
So to clarify the last point, it really was just Tory MP's doing their notorious Conservative thing of blocking anything new and rural yokels being like "Oh arr, I don't loik change, water from a tap scares me"? There's no real evidence of railway management seeing road locomotive haulage of either passengers or freight as a potential business threat?
@@sirrliv Basically yes. Just as they had opposed Canals, then Railways, then Road Locomotives. But, ironically, many Tory MPs were shareholders and directors of the Railway and canal Companies. And they managed to effectively block, in the case of the railways, Government regulation and safety legislation for the railways for decades.
:) 👍
Looking at the front wheels, I expected to hear that it followed a monorail type guide arrangement. But alas, it was to facilitate steering. The Darwin - Lankensperger - Ackerman* steering though available, probably wouldn't have helped.
( * As it was back then, Ackerman merely patented Lankensperger's steering system. Stolen by Ackerman, whilst acting has Lankensperger's English agent )
Not bad ideas: rather like precursors to the Sentinel.
I’ve never heard of this one, thanks for making and sharing!
That was a pretty impressive speed to Versailles, particularly with the state of roads at the time.
Do you know if it had to stop for coke or water during the trip?
It had to stop for water. The roads were actually pretty good. Napoleon 1e had done a massive amount to improve the roads in France and led a huge road building programme. The Turnpike roads in Britain, too, were well maintained and well-metalled.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory Interesting, stopping for water means that the actual road speed was higher still. It must have been true sights and sounds of the future, for both passengers and bystanders.
That's a neat one. It sounds like there wasn't anything really wrong with the thing itself like the road being too rough or using too much coal for the fare.
It was just that the railway was quicker. As you say nothing wrong with the road locomotive - didn't use too much coke, the roads were in excellent condition. It was just quicker by rail, and it could carry far more passengers.
This is one of your saddest videos. Listening to this story it feels like a great triumph, and then it hits hard at the end when the steam car was just not meant to be yet.
I know. It's almost the reverse of the story of the railways in the twentieth century with the roads taking traffic from the railways. Such a shame it didn't succeed. One wonders what road transport may have been like if Dietz had been able to develop even more. Heck, just imagine if Cugnot had been able to develop his design from 1769!!!!!
It didn't hang around then; are there any reports of it running anyone down or being involved in any collisions? Or did it make such a noise that everyone kept well clear 😀
No collisions, no explosions. Worked perfectly safely. The only account of noise is from Colonel Maceroni, who was testing his own steam coach in Paris at the time: he said the Dietz remorquer was very noisy in comparison to his own machine, and he thought it quite crude being a mere 'tractor'. But as Maceroni was clearly out to promote his own invention we can probably take his comments with a pinch of salt.
Once upon a long ago I didn’t pay to “Arts et métiers” the required attention. My fault. And I really dislike road transportation, even if I sometimes, when there’s no traffic (almost never) I get fun driving.
Why steam-powered road transport lost then? An engine of equal power on rails could have hauled more passengers cars and a tender, increasing the range. And chances are that a train was faster. And that largely overcome the advantage of smaller investments in infrastructure.
And, after all, it was the railway the 19th century high-tech, like Internet nowadays (including a speculative bubble 😁).
It would have required a powerful car industry, strong enough to first change the attitude toward cars and then to mass produce affordable cars to turn the tide (and almost choke itself).
Gosh, 30 psi - I'm surprised it could even pull the skin off a rice pudding.
The drive was geared down. Oscillating cylinders running fast geared down to the final drive to increase torque. It was certainly a capable machine.
Where can the remorqueur a vapeur be seen today ?
The original was scrapped but the model is on display at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. It's a fantastic museum to visit!
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory I visited this museum as a child, I really liked it but I dont remember the remorqueur, I need to go visit it again as I live near Paris
@@mechanicalbird282 It's in the same room as the Fardier Cugnot and the model shares a case with the model of Robert Stephenson's "Samson" locomotive.
@@AnthonyDawsonHistory thanks for the indications, I will definitely go there as soon as I have time
@@mechanicalbird282 Excellent. It's 12Euros for a ticket.
Interesting that it burned coke to reduce erstwhile pollution. I wonder if steam could be re-introduced using coke plus other ways of zero carbon emmissions. I am sure the technology exists or could be developed to manufacture modern high speed driver friendly zero emiision steam locomotives
There's just as much carbon produced with coke as there is with coal. Coke is made by heating coal to very high temperatures.
The only thing you don't get is smoke when burning coke in the firebox.