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RUTWAY TRANSPORT SYSTEM
Authoritative Details of a Method, Now Being Adopted in India, which Permits Vehicles to Run on Roads or on Special Inexpensively Lard Tracks
IN the issue of Tie.e Commercial Motor dated July 14th, on page 760, appeared a letter disclosing an opportunity for makers of British tractors, in connection with the development in India of the Rutway system of transport. The basic principles of this scheme possess many features of interest,therefore we are giving our readers an outline of the ideas underlying the plan, and the essential details of construction.
After much effort on the part of the inventor, the system of Rutway transportation, designed and pressed forward by Mr. H. W. Perry, a consulting engineer, of Trichinonoly, India, has had a real opportunity for proving itself, and is now to be adopted in several parts of India where an economical feeder trans port system is called for. Mr. Perry, during more than 30 years' service on the Indian railways, has evolved, and now proved, a Dian which combines many of the features of both railways and roads, and is eminently suitable for adoption to meet the transport needs of territory being developed.
. An Inexpensive Track.
The inventor's idea has been to find cheaper substitutes for the costly standard railway equipment, and Mr. Perry's argument runs directly contrary• to one of the basic conceptions of railway work B30 ing. His point is that under normal practice the expensive steel rail, instead of being allowed to rest continuously on a firm foundation of rammed ballast or stone, is elevated and made into a continuous bridge from end to end of the huntireds of miles of line.
So that the metal rail can carry the heavy axle-loads of large locomotives across the spans or gaps in this bridge, the metal rail must be made much stronger than would he necessary if it rested directly on a firm foundation throughout its length. This may be good for the Steel trade, but it greatly handicaps development.
Defects of Usual System.
Further, as the wheel-loads on the spans of this railbridge are concentrated on to the intermittent supports of piers at the ends of each span, instead of being evenly distributed along the whole length of ground, these supports must be large, i.e., heavy steel chairs and sleepers. Again, since the• rails are single solid bars, cut through at every joint, millions of special steel fish plates, bolts, nuts, etc., are needed. When the upper 20 lb. of a 90-lb. rail gets worn away, the remaining 70 lb. has to be scrapped, and -a new 90-1b, rail bought.
The elevation. of the rail into a bridge is also dangerous. The heavy engine and carriage wheels tend constantly to leave the ridge; they can be derailed by any slight obstruction or•'small displacement of the rails. Once off the rails it is a • long and laborious job to lift them on again.
• Finally, and most important, when flanges were' put on vehicle wheels instead of ois the rails, vehicles were deprived of the power of moving anywhere off the rails just as road vehicles of similar gauge were precluded from using the rails. In war time, during serious congestion, or in new areas especially, these disabilities have caused enormous losses to everybody.
So that a more versatile and economical type of track may be adopted, at least for light railways, Mr. Perry puts forward his Rutway track, and is now at length getting the Indian Railway Board to take a really practical interest in his scheme.
The track has its rails Made of ordinary standard unequal angle section bars—one within and breaking joint with the other— which are Mid and bedded continuously on an ordinary broken stone and mud road pavement, the depth of which varies with the nature •of the ground. The joints in one rail are staggered with those in the opposite rail, so that through the length of track 75 per cent. of the rail section is continuous. At each joint a grip-plate, made out of a piece of flat bar-iron, cut and folded to fit around the outer sides of the double angle-bars is slid over and hammered lightly down on to them,
Flanged Wheels Avoided.
The guiding flanges of the rail angle-section bars make contact with the inner sides of the wheels, and so the gauge is preserved by angled strut-bars, instead of by tie-rods, and the former have small tabs cut out of • their lower flanges and bent downwards to fit into •slots in the bases of the gripplates. The track is held in position, and lateral creep on curves prevented, by permanently filling up the space between the two rails with stone and mud, and thus burying the whole of it, except the wearing part, i.e,, the tread and flange of the upper or wearing bar.
Only the wearing bar needs to be touched once the track is laid. When this is worn down, it can be quickly and easily changed. The only tool needed, both for laying and for maintenance, is a simple hammer.
Many advantages are claimed for the Rutway system. The angle-bar rail is continuously bedded on a firm foundation and distributes its load evenly along its whole length. No expensive sleepers are needed. It can carry a much heavier axleload for a given weight of rail-section. Being made of separate wearing and bearing parts, the former only requite renewal. Wheel tyres, baying no narrow flanges, will wear much longer.
Since the wheels of the Rutway vehicles will be running in the lowest part of the track, and be like ordinary vehicle wheels, without flanges on their treads, derailments would be difficult and unlikely. If they occurred, re-railment wotild be quick and easy, for the heavy axle load would tend to make the vehicle slide back again into the ruts. Again—and this is, perhaps, the most important point—putting the flanges on the rails in the Rutway track restores, to the rolling stock, the power to travel on ordinary road or ground surface as well as on the rails_
Road Vehicles on Rutways.
No expensive points and crossings, with interlocking apparatus, and no pointsmen, are needed. For, being able to steer and run on ordinary hard roads the Rutway trains, at all places where turnouts are needed, can be left to take their own course; the Rutway tracks being -simply terminated by bringing their two rails together in a gradually tapering nose or point, so that trains and vehicles travelling in the opposite direction may easily strike on and regain the tracks. Thus at any convenient point there can be free interchangebetween road and rail,
Mr. Perry has now proved that such a track is very cheap and easy to construct. For a narrow gauge (2 ft. 6 ins.) line about six light tractors with a dozen trailers would suffice to lay about four or five miles in a day. Thus all the merits of steel rolling on steel—speed, great haulage power; transporting capacity—are possible at extremely low cost.
In ordinary countries the cost of building a 2-ft. 6-in. gauge Rutway, and equipping it with rolling stock, is put at from £1,000 to £1,500 per mile, and the line would have a capacity of 100,000 ton-miles per day. A 2-ft.-gauge Rutway with only 18 lb. •rails would cost about £600 per mile and have a transporting_ capacity of some 40,000 ton-miles per day.
Greater generaluse is likely to be made, however, of the metre gauge line, touched upon in the letter published in The Commercial Motor dated July 14th, 1031. In
deed, by a modification of his original scheme, Mr. Perry has planned a metre gauge " wooden Rutway which he estimated would cost only 301:0 per mile to build, and £30 per mile per year to maintain. The actual costs for such a Rutway are not yet to hand in England, but the fact that the work already done is being found satisfactory and is encouraging the rapid spread of the system are proven by the contents of that same letter.
The inventor sees a great future for Rutways in the backwoods of Australia and the Colonies, and especially in Canada, where timber is plentiful in the ill-served territories of the west. He further computes that a standard-gauge railway, costing only about £2,000 per mile, could carry all the traffic (about 40,000 ton-miles daily) on the Liverpool-Manchester road, perhaps the most heavily used of British main roads, and would save haulage, fuel and probably time,