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Decauville
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Decauville
Decauville (French: [dəkovil]) was a manufacturing company which was founded by Paul Decauville (1846–1922), a French pioneer in industrial railways. Decauville's major innovation was the use of ready-made sections of light, narrow-gauge track fastened to steel sleepers; this track was portable and could be disassembled and transported very easily.
The first Decauville railway used 400 mm (15+3⁄4 in) gauge; Decauville later refined his invention and switched to 500 mm (19+3⁄4 in) and 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) gauge.
In 1853 Paul Decauville's father, Amand, created a boilermaking workshop on the family farm in order to set up distilleries on the farms to the east of Paris. In 1864, Amand asked his eldest son, Paul, to come and help him following health problems. Very quickly, the latter seeks to improve the functioning of the estate. Very developed under the Second Empire in the northern half of France, the production of sugar beet and its refining into sugar, is linked to that of alcoholic products such as fuel. Amand will therefore endeavor to make this production profitable.
In 1867, in order to overcome a labor shortage, Amand Decauville looked for a way to mechanize the plowing of his fields. He selected an English system by engineer John Fowler that allowed plowing using a locomobile and a reversible plow. A workshop for repairing these machines completes the boilermaking one. Amand Decauville died in 1871 and the same year, the Decauville workshops began to carry out boilermaking work for the company Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM).
In 1875, things rushed: at the beginning of the year, Paul Decauville tried several means of transport within the very confines of his farm. Among these is the “H. Corbin System”: a wooden track, resembling a ladder, the uprights of which were covered with an iron angle iron. The wagons had only one axle, each resting on the previous one. After tests, this system was considered too fragile and was rejected. That same year, the Decauville farm chose to grow a lot of sugar beets and the harvest was expected to be excellent. A stock of 9000 tonnes of beets were waiting in soggy fields that are very difficult to access. Ordinary means of transportation (the dumper) prove unusable. Decauville then remembered the Corbin system and decided to have a track made in its workshops consisting of two square irons spaced 400 mm and fixed on flat iron crosspieces. To ensure transport, a worker had the idea of creating wagons. Thus constituted, the assembly no longer sunk into the ground. Faced with the urgency of the harvest, it was produced in quantity, which made it possible to finish the skidding before the first frosts.
Decauville produced track elements, engines and cars. Those were exported to many countries, in particular to the colonial possessions of European powers. In 1878 Paul Decauville was given permission to build the Jardin d'Acclimatation railway in order to demonstrate passenger transport operations on his railway system during the Exposition Universelle of 1878.
The Decauville factory in Petite-Synthe produced prefabricated narrow gauge railway track and rolling stock from 1903 to 1922 in Petite-Synthe near Dunkirk, France.
The factory belonged to Etablissements Decauville ainé, a French manufacturer focussing on the production and sales of narrow gauge railway material. The factory was located near the Aciéries de France in the Nord département in northern France.
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Decauville
Decauville (French: [dəkovil]) was a manufacturing company which was founded by Paul Decauville (1846–1922), a French pioneer in industrial railways. Decauville's major innovation was the use of ready-made sections of light, narrow-gauge track fastened to steel sleepers; this track was portable and could be disassembled and transported very easily.
The first Decauville railway used 400 mm (15+3⁄4 in) gauge; Decauville later refined his invention and switched to 500 mm (19+3⁄4 in) and 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) gauge.
In 1853 Paul Decauville's father, Amand, created a boilermaking workshop on the family farm in order to set up distilleries on the farms to the east of Paris. In 1864, Amand asked his eldest son, Paul, to come and help him following health problems. Very quickly, the latter seeks to improve the functioning of the estate. Very developed under the Second Empire in the northern half of France, the production of sugar beet and its refining into sugar, is linked to that of alcoholic products such as fuel. Amand will therefore endeavor to make this production profitable.
In 1867, in order to overcome a labor shortage, Amand Decauville looked for a way to mechanize the plowing of his fields. He selected an English system by engineer John Fowler that allowed plowing using a locomobile and a reversible plow. A workshop for repairing these machines completes the boilermaking one. Amand Decauville died in 1871 and the same year, the Decauville workshops began to carry out boilermaking work for the company Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM).
In 1875, things rushed: at the beginning of the year, Paul Decauville tried several means of transport within the very confines of his farm. Among these is the “H. Corbin System”: a wooden track, resembling a ladder, the uprights of which were covered with an iron angle iron. The wagons had only one axle, each resting on the previous one. After tests, this system was considered too fragile and was rejected. That same year, the Decauville farm chose to grow a lot of sugar beets and the harvest was expected to be excellent. A stock of 9000 tonnes of beets were waiting in soggy fields that are very difficult to access. Ordinary means of transportation (the dumper) prove unusable. Decauville then remembered the Corbin system and decided to have a track made in its workshops consisting of two square irons spaced 400 mm and fixed on flat iron crosspieces. To ensure transport, a worker had the idea of creating wagons. Thus constituted, the assembly no longer sunk into the ground. Faced with the urgency of the harvest, it was produced in quantity, which made it possible to finish the skidding before the first frosts.
Decauville produced track elements, engines and cars. Those were exported to many countries, in particular to the colonial possessions of European powers. In 1878 Paul Decauville was given permission to build the Jardin d'Acclimatation railway in order to demonstrate passenger transport operations on his railway system during the Exposition Universelle of 1878.
The Decauville factory in Petite-Synthe produced prefabricated narrow gauge railway track and rolling stock from 1903 to 1922 in Petite-Synthe near Dunkirk, France.
The factory belonged to Etablissements Decauville ainé, a French manufacturer focussing on the production and sales of narrow gauge railway material. The factory was located near the Aciéries de France in the Nord département in northern France.
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