Railroad speeder
A speeder (also known as a section car, railway motor car, putt-putt, track-maintenance car, crew car, jigger, trike, quad, trolley, inspection car, or draisine) is a small railcar used around the world by track inspectors and work crews to move quickly to and from work sites.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Although slow compared to a train or car, it is called speeder because it is faster than a human-powered vehicle such as a handcar. Motorized inspection cars date back to at least 1895, when the Kalamazoo Manufacturing Company started building gasoline-engined inspection cars.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In the 1990s, many speeders were replaced by pickup trucks or sport utility vehicles with additional flanged wheels that could be lowered for travelling on rails, called "road–rail vehicles" or hi-rails for "highway-railroad". Speeders are collected by hobbyists, who refurbish them for excursions organized by the North American Railcar Operators Association<ref>NARCOA website</ref> in the U.S. and Canada and the Australian Society of Section Car Operators, Inc. in Australia.
Motorcar manufacturers and modelsEdit
| United States | Canada |
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Various railways and their workshops also manufactured speeders. Often these were a copy of commercially available cars, such as Wickham and Fairmont.
DimensionsEdit
Approximate dimensions of a common speeder car are given below. Due to the variety of base models and customization these are not fixed numbers. These values are from a Fairmont A4-D.<ref>A-4</ref>
- Rail gauge: Template:RailGauge (56.5 inches)
- Weight: Template:Convert
- Width: Template:Convert
- Height: Template:Convert
- Length: Template:Convert (~110 inches)
- Wheel diameter: Template:Convert
- Floor height: 80–120% of the wheel diameter; Template:Convert-Template:Convert
In popular cultureEdit
Sandy from Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go is an anthropomorphic rail speeder.
GalleryEdit
- Yeppoon.jpg
Former Queensland Rail (Australia) speeders
- Wickham trolley at Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre.jpg
A former UK MOD railway engineering personnel carrier (Wickham trolley)
- South Australian Railways -- Dort motor inspection car at Islington workshops, ca 1924.jpg
Dort tourer modified by the South Australian Railways in the 1920s to be a motor inspection car
- GAZ-13 Chaika draisine.jpg
Russian GAZ-13 Chaika car converted to a speeder, preserved at the Hungarian Railway Museum
- VW T1-BD 20-5031.JPG
Deutsche Bundesbahn speeder based on the Volkswagen Type 2 light commercial vehicle
- Metrotrolley.jpg
A battery-powered ultrasonic rail flaw detector trolley made at the Centre For Advanced Transport Engineering and Research, Western Australia
See alsoEdit
- Cater MetroTrolley
- Draisine
- Handcar
- North American Railcar Operators Association
- Railbus
- Railcar
- Road-rail vehicle
- The Railrodder