Balloon Train - Triumph And Downfall - Alternative View

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Balloon Train - Triumph And Downfall - Alternative View
Balloon Train - Triumph And Downfall - Alternative View

Video: Balloon Train - Triumph And Downfall - Alternative View

Video: Balloon Train - Triumph And Downfall - Alternative View
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“Balloon train? Well, I remember, - the old railwayman told me. - There was a lot of noise. And then everything calmed down at once, like there was nothing. Everything is forgotten. And it is true, there are almost no witnesses of that epic with the ball train. Who can decipher the SHELT acronym now? Who remembers the inventor Nikolai Yarmolchuk?

Down with the wheels

This amazing story took place in the mid-30s of the last century, during the era of industrialization. The young engineer Nikolai Grigorievich Yarmolchuk, unknown to anyone before, invented a comfortable, safe bullet train and, it seemed, finally solved the problem that designers of many countries had been struggling with for a long time.

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From Moscow to Leningrad - in three, or even two hours! From Moscow to Irkutsk - 30 hours instead of a week! But super speed was only one and far from the most important of the advantages of the miracle train. What is this train?

The idea was unexpected, bold, even daring: to abandon the usual railway tracks and use balls instead of wheels. The latter had to roll along the road in the form of a gutter. Here it is - a single-track movement, which makes it possible to get huge speeds! The wheels of conventional trains are kept on the rails only by the thin rims of their flanges. In this case, wagging, blows are inevitable. And the higher the speed of the train, the stronger these unpleasant and even dangerous phenomena.

Ball rollers are another matter. They are free, their connection with the road is elastic. The ball train will be automatically, naturally installed in the chute, it will be able to move smoothly at any highest speed. That is how Yarmolchuk reasoned, and it was true.

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Of course, a new, perfect form of transport had to run on electricity and, therefore, be called a ball-electric tube, or SHELT for short.

At first, Nikolai Yarmolchuk worked on his invention alone. No one was in a hurry to help him. On the contrary, he met refusals everywhere. A few years later, the Tekhnika-Molodyozhi magazine explained it this way: “The young, unknown Yarmolchuk ran into the indifferent and hostile attitude of the old specialists. They declared that his idea was absurd and unrealizable."

Unexpected turn

The inventor then could not even imagine that soon everything would change dramatically, that he would be in the center of everyone's attention, and his balloon train would be declared the last word in transport technology. The explanation is simple: politics intervened. The idea of an overtrain ideally coincided with the then proclaimed slogan “catch up and overtake”.

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This unexpected turn took place in 1929. At the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers, Yarmolchuk managed to build a model of a ball car. She moved confidently along the tray, laid on the floor of the laboratory.

The operation of the model turned out to be so convincing that a few months later at the People's Commissariat of Railways a special department was created with a long but accurate name: "Bureau of Experimental Construction of Bullet Transport for the Development and Implementation of N. G. Yarmolchuk's Invention", abbreviated as BOSST. From now on, not alone, but with a group of engineers and technicians, the inventor continued to work on the creation of an outlandish express.

The train's rollers looked like "spheres", hollow metal balls with cut sides. From above they were covered with a layer of rubber. Each carriage rested on two "spheres", inside of which a powerful electric motor was suspended on an axle, which, using a friction or gear transmission, like a squirrel in a wheel, set the roller in motion. Thus, the carriage moved on its rollers, as a bicycle or motorcycle travels on two wheels. Stability was achieved due to a strong decrease in the center of gravity, almost to the fulcrum (Yarmolchuk, explaining this, cited as an example the amazing stability of the famous toy "Vanka-vstanka").

Laboratory experiments began to study the mechanics of an extraordinary train.

Fight on two fronts

Articles in magazines (including special ones) described the enormous advantages of the electric ball train, "promising a real revolution in transport." When constructing trough roads from reinforced concrete, the metal consumption will be one and a half times less than when laying rail tracks. And since the sections can be pre-fabricated at the factory, laying even a very long road will take very little time.

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The movement of passenger trains was planned to be accelerated five or six times, freight trains - even more, twenty times! And what about the capacity of trough roads? It will be twice as high as that of the rail. Ball trains, one magazine assured, would become "a powerful vehicle capable of transporting the population of entire cities in the shortest possible time."

But Yarmolchuk's opponents were also not silent, criticism was also heard. However, she was drowning in a chorus of praise. "Yarmolchuk is a communist," wrote the magazine "In battle for equipment." - He knows the importance of invention for the Soviet Union, he knows that we must catch up and overtake the capitalist countries in technical and economic terms. He also knows the directives about fighting on two fronts. And he engages in a battle with the right deviators who underestimate the importance of the electric ball transport, while simultaneously waging a fierce struggle with the leftist benders."

In April 1932, a one-fifth of its life size was manufactured. Six months later, there is a whole train of five such cars. However, these mini-carriages of cylindrical, "airplane" shape, with round windows-portholes were not so small: three-quarters of a meter in diameter and more than six meters long. The train was like a single body - flexible, smooth, sitting low over the bed of the trough road.

The front carriage ended with a fairing, similar to the head of either a snake or some prehistoric monster. Here was the driver's cabin.

No obstacles in sight

To test the model at the Severyanin station near Moscow, a ball race track was built on a site surrounded by a fence - an experimental electrified chute track. It consisted of two closed rings about three kilometers long, connected by a connecting branch.

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The tray was wooden. A ball train - a blue-red snake rushed along it at a speed of up to 70 kilometers per hour. Stability, traffic safety, braking power, tray and “spherical” reliability were tested.

Although it was only a model of a ball train, passengers could also get in the way - two in each carriage, however, only in a recumbent position, sitting on oilcloth pillows. Correspondent of the Znanie-sila magazine D. Lipovetsky, who made a trip in a ball train, described his feelings as follows: “When I climbed into a narrow trailer and prepared for an experimental run on a three-kilometer ring, frankly speaking, I was tormented by doubts and even fear. It seemed to me that the train should jump off the tray at high speed, that it would definitely turn over, something unexpected and bad would happen.

But nothing like that happened. Swaying softly and slightly noticeably, without a rumble and the usual iron clatter of wheels in trains, the ball train swallowed space. On curves, he spontaneously bent over, maintaining balance. The rubber-clad balls spun silently, carrying the metal snake forward with great speed."

The tests at the ball race track continued for several months. Their results were considered by the Expert Council headed by Academician S. A. Chaplygin. The conclusion was very, very positive. Its main meaning is that it is necessary to build a ball-and-roll road;

Moscow - Noginsk

And the balloon train, its amazing qualities have already begun to inspire poetry. The famous poet Vladimir Narbut, after he himself raced along the miraculous road, wrote a poem, which I call "Balloezd" (it was published in 1934 in the literary magazine "Thirty Days"):

On a shallow tray

(Almost along the bowling chute)

He started up.

He flies to the hum

A shell resembling a certain …

The poet has already seen a real, passenger balloon train, rushing at an unprecedented speed along the first long trough track. And it seemed that it was about to happen.

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Really. On August 13, 1933, the Council of People's Commissars, by its resolution, obliged the Commissariat of Railways to begin construction "as soon as possible" of an experimental-operational ball-roll road.

It was about the so-called "medium-sized road", with smaller trains, with roller-skating rinks with a diameter of two meters and a speed of 180 kilometers per hour. The construction of a road of "normal dimensions" for trains with ball rollers with a diameter of three meters 70 centimeters and a speed of up to 300 kilometers per hour was postponed for the near future. An experimental ball-roll road would allow one to gain experience, master a new type of transport, and then switch to super-speeds.

The search for a suitable route has begun. Of the two options - Moscow - Zvenigorod and Moscow - Noginsk, preference was given to the second option. The line 50 kilometers long would connect the industrial regions of the Moscow region with the capital. In Moscow, the starting point of the route was planned to be arranged in Izmailovo, near the metro station and tram stops. During the year, the balloon trains were supposed to carry up to five million passengers.

World Tray Network

At the same time, there was a hasty design of the chute track, rolling stock, electrical equipment, and contact network. The length of the train of three ball cars, according to the project, exceeded 25 meters. Each carriage had 82 seats. The trough track was conceived as reinforced concrete. Part of it was planned to be raised to overpasses, and ground sections were to be fenced on both sides.

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"Now the project is at the stage of practical implementation," reported in November 1933 the magazine "In battle for equipment." "All this requires intense and persistent work, but the well-coordinated apparatus of the Bolshevik engineers is pushing things forward." Moreover, in parallel, the project of a passenger ball-electric train of "normal operational dimensions", with carriages for 110 passengers each, was being worked out.

Such a balloon express, moving along the tray at the speed of an aircraft, was supposed to make regular flights between Moscow and Leningrad.

Yarmolchuk himself at first considered his train as a “reserve” of the socialist construction project”and did not support the“leftist bending workers”who called for all railways to be replaced with tray ones. However, over time, he began to talk about "a powerful tray network of communication throughout the country", and further and more - around the world. Addressing the young readers of the Pioneer magazine, he wrote: "The balloon train was created in our country as the brainchild of October, and when you are adults, I am convinced that balloon tracks will be laid across the World Union of Soviet Republics."

The construction of the world's first trough road was planned to be completed in the fall of 1934, by the 17th anniversary of the October Revolution. But the construction didn't even start. The noise around the ball train died down as quickly as it began. What happened?

Death of an idea

Finally, the brakes of normal criticism have worked. Common sense and confidence that the railways have not yet exhausted their capabilities, still prevailed. The idea of rebuilding the entire track, replacing it for thousands of kilometers with reinforced concrete trays could come to minds only very heated by politics. Speaking about the economic benefits of the ball trains, those who argued this forgot about the enormous costs that were completely unbearable for the country.

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N. G. Yarmolchuk, quite recently surrounded by extraordinary attention, now turned out to be outcast.

The author managed to track down the inventor's niece. Sofya Sergeevna Yarmolchuk. She met with Nikolai Grigorievich in Moscow in 1971. “He was of average height, rather stout,” Sofya Sergeevna recalled, “he looked younger than his 73 years. My father and uncle that time talked a lot about something, secluded in the kitchen. On the street, my father told me the content of this conversation. It turned out that Nikolai Grigorievich did not abandon his attempts to create a ball train and was busy with Kosygin's reception. Later I learned that he was denied an audience."

Perhaps after that Yarmolchuk finally gave up on his invention and resigned himself. He became ill and died in April 1978 at the age of 80.

No matter how you relate to the idea of a ball train, one thing is indisputable: N. G. Yarmolchuk was a talented inventor, one of the pioneers in the creation of bullet transport. Some elements of his ball train began to be used later: a chute track for hovercraft trains, rubber coating of wheels in metro trains, streamlined carriages, and aerodynamic brakes. Alas, only elements. The balloon train itself remained only an interesting and very instructive page in the history of technology.

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