The Micheline
Michelin’s ingenuity for seeking new applications for their tyres but perhaps their oddest idea was the Micheline. It looked like a coach or bus that was by the late 1920s a familiar sight on the roads but it was designed to run on rails like a train, It was articulated with separate compartments for the driver and could accommodate up to twenty-four passengers. Instead of conventional metal wheels.
One was even trialled on the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway (LM&SR), running from Bletchley to Oxford and back, and received a gushing review from the correspondent of Commercial Motor in its edition of February 16, 1932. They wrote, “behind the fixed, metal guiding flanges are rubber inserts which effectively deaden noise due to lateral motion of the car ; there is no clanging or ‘shriek’ when cornering. Tyre life has been found to be some 20,000 miles and the permissible load per wheel is 121 cwt”.
They went on, “Easily the most outstanding feature about the run was the silence; there was no ‘clicking’ as the wheels ran over the joints in the track, so that the familiar indication of train speed was absent. The engine and gearbox produced no sound audible to the passengers; apart from the speedometer the sole impression of speed could be gained from objects beside the line”.
As for braking and acceleration, “by reason of the three times greater adhesion between the pneumatic tyre and the rail, as compared with the steel wheel on the steel rail, braking and acceleration can be far better than in ordinary railway practice. From rest we attained 40 m.p.h. in 38 secs., 50 m.p.h. in 1 minute, and 60 m.p.h. in 1 minute 45 secs. The normal cruising speed is anything up to 55 m.p.h. From 10 m.p.h. the car stopped in under 10 ft; actually it can be stopped from 60 m.p.h. in 210 ft. This suffices to show that present railway standards can be exceeded by any amount which is commercially practicable. The general riding qualities of the car were marked and the steadiness in all circumstances was equally noticeable”.
Despite the gushing review the LM&SR decided not to place an order and while some trains were built and saw service, there were a number of operational issues. The weight-bearing capacity of the tyres was limited compared with the conventional metal wheel, which meant that each carriage had to have many more wheels, great for a tyre manufacturer, not such good news for the train operator.
Nevertheless the new Paris Métro line 14, opened in 1998, has trains running with rubber wheels and the last operational Michelines can be found in Madagascar.
