Versailles Rail Accident
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Versailles Rail Accident
On 8 May 1842, a train crashed in the cutting between Meudon and Bellevue stations on the railway between Versailles and Paris, France. The train was travelling to Paris when it derailed after the leading locomotive broke an axle, and the carriages behind piled into it and caught fire. It was the first French railway accident and the deadliest in the world at the time, causing between 52 and 200 deaths, including that of explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville. The accident led the French to abandon the practice of locking passengers in their carriages. Metal fatigue was poorly understood at the time and the accident led to systematic research into the problem. Derailment and fire By the late afternoon of Sunday 8 May 1842, the public celebrations being held in honour of king Louis Philippe I's saint's day in the Gardens of Versailles had finished and many people wished to return to Paris. At 5:30 pm a train left the ''Rive Gauche'' Versailles railway station for Paris Montparn ...
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Meudon
Meudon () is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris. The city is known for many historic monuments and some extraordinary trees. One of them, the Imperial Cedar (), attracted the attention of Empress Eugénie and Queen Victoria. As of March 2021, the tree is in good condition, but it is threatened by real estate speculation. Another real estate project is planned for the historic park of the Napoleon III villa built by Charles Schacher. Both projects are controversial and have aroused local opposition. Geography The town of Meudon is built on the hills and valleys of the Seine. The wood of Meudon lies for the most part to the west of the town. The north-west part of Meudon, overlooking the Seine, is known as ''Bellevue'' ("beautiful view"). History At Meudon, the argile plastique clay was extensively mined in the 19th century. The first fossil of the European diatryma ' ...
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Firebox (steam Engine)
In a steam engine, the firebox is the area where the fuel is burned, producing heat to boil the water in the boiler. Most are somewhat box-shaped, hence the name. The hot gases generated in the firebox are pulled through a rack of tubes running through the boiler. Steam locomotive fire tube firebox In the standard steam locomotive fire-tube boiler, the firebox is surrounded by water space on five sides. The bottom of the firebox is open to atmospheric pressure, but covered by fire grates (solid fuel) or a firing pan (liquid fuel). If the engine burns solid fuel, like wood or coal, there is a grate covering most of the bottom of the firebox to hold the fire. An ashpan, mounted underneath the firebox and below the grates, catches and collects hot embers, ashes, and other solid combustion waste as it falls through the grates. In a coal-burning locomotive, the grates may be shaken to clean dead ash from the bottom of the fire. They are shaken either manually or (in larger locomotiv ...
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Transport In Hauts-de-Seine
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Transport enables human trade, which is essential for the development of civilizations. Transport infrastructure consists of both fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and pipelines, and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance. Means of transport are any of the different kinds of transport facilities used to carry people or cargo. They may include vehicles, riding animals, and pack animals. Vehicles may inclu ...
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1842 In France
Events from the year 1842 in France. Incumbents * Monarch – Louis Philippe I Events *8 May - Versailles train crash at Meudon, results in the deaths of at least 55 passengers. *9 July - Legislative election held. Births January to June *31 January - Marie-Charles David de Mayréna, adventurer (died 1890) *13 March - Joseph Valentin Boussinesq, mathematician and physicist (died 1929) *18 March - Stéphane Mallarmé, poet and critic (died 1898) *25 March - Jean Marie Charles Abadie, ophthalmologist (died 1932) *4 April - Édouard Lucas, mathematician (died 1891) *17 April - Maurice Rouvier, statesman (died 1911) *10 June - Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy, painter and sculptor (died 1923) July to December *30 July - Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, historian (died 1923) *14 August - Jean Gaston Darboux, mathematician (died 1917) *25 August - Édouard Louis Trouessart, zoologist (died 1927) *28 August - Placide Louis Chapelle, Archbishop in Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orl ...
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Railway Accidents In 1842
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles (rolling stock) are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks usually consist of steel rails, installed on Railroad tie, sleepers (ties) set in track ballast, ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels, moves. Other variations are also possible, such as "slab track", in which the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a rail transport system generally encounters lower friction, frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars (carriages and wagons) can be coupled into longer trains. The rail transport operations, operation is carried out by a ...
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Derailments In France
In rail transport, a derailment occurs when a rail vehicle such as a train comes off its rails. Although many derailments are minor, all result in temporary disruption of the proper operation of the railway system and they are a potentially serious hazard. A derailment of a train can be caused by a collision with another object, an operational error (such as excessive speed through a curve), the mechanical failure of tracks (such as broken rails), or the mechanical failure of the wheels, among other causes. In emergency situations, deliberate derailment with derails or catch points is sometimes used to prevent a more serious accident. History The first recorded train derailment in history is known as the Hightstown Rail Accident in New Jersey that occurred on November 8, 1833. The train was traveling between Hightstown and Spotswood New Jersey and derailed after an axle broke on one of the carriages as a result of a journal box catching fire. The derailment resulted in ...
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Engineering Failures
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. See glossary of engineering. The term ''engineering'' is derived from the Latin ''ingenium'', meaning "cleverness" and ''ingeniare'', meaning "to contrive, devise". Definition The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET) has defined "engineering" as: The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specif ...
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August Wöhler
August Wöhler (22 June 1819 – 21 March 1914) was a German railway engineer, best remembered for his systematic investigations of metal fatigue. Life Born in the town of Soltau, Hanover, the son of local teacher Georg Heinrich Wöhler, he showed early mathematical ability and won a scholarship to study at the Higher Vocational College of Hannover from 1835, under the direction of Karl Karmarsch. In 1840, he was recruited to the Borsig works in Berlin where he worked on the manufacture of rail tracks. In 1843, after a brief stay in Hannover, he started to receive instruction in locomotive driving in Belgium, returning as an engineer on the Hanover-Brunswick line of the Royal Hanoverian State Railways. By 1847, Wöhler was chief superintendent of rolling stock on the Lower Silesian-Marcher railway in Frankfurt (Oder). The railroad was nationalised by the Prussian state railways in 1852 and Wöhler's growing reputation led to his appointment by the Prussian Prussia, , O ...
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William Fairbairn
Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet of Ardwick (19 February 1789 – 18 August 1874) was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer Structural engineers analyze, design, plan, and research structural components and structural systems to achieve design goals and ensure the safety and comfort of users or occupants. Their work takes account mainly of safety, technical, economic ... and shipbuilder. In 1854 he succeeded George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson to become the third president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Early career Born in Kelso, Scotland, Kelso to a local farmer, Fairbairn showed an early mechanical aptitude and served as an apprentice millwright in Newcastle upon Tyne where he befriended the young George Stephenson. He moved to Manchester in 1813 to work for Adam Parkinson and Thomas Hewes. In 1817, he launched his mill-machinery business with James Lillie as William Fairbairn & Sons, Fairbairn and Lillie Engine Makers. Structural studies ...
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William John Macquorn Rankine
William John Macquorn Rankine (; 5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mechanical engineer who also contributed to civil engineering, physics and mathematics. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on the first of the three thermodynamic laws. He developed the Rankine scale, an equivalent to the Kelvin scale of temperature, but in degrees Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. Rankine developed a complete theory of the steam engine and indeed of all heat engines. His manuals of engineering science and practice were used for many decades after their publication in the 1850s and 1860s. He published several hundred papers and notes on science and engineering topics, from 1840 onwards, and his interests were extremely varied, including, in his youth, botany, music theory and number theory, and, in his mature years, most major branches of science, mathematics and engineering. ...
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Fatigue (material)
In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striations on some parts of the fracture surface. The crack will continue to grow until it reaches a critical size, which occurs when the stress intensity factor of the crack exceeds the fracture toughness of the material, producing rapid propagation and typically complete fracture of the structure. Fatigue has traditionally been associated with the failure of metal components which led to the term metal fatigue. In the nineteenth century, the sudden failing of metal railway axles was thought to be caused by the metal ''crystallising'' because of the brittle appearance of the fracture surface, but this has since been disproved. Most materials, such as composites, plastics and ceramics, seem to experience some sort of fatigue-related failure. To aid in predicting t ...
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Monument Historique
''Monument historique'' () is a designation given to some national heritage sites in France. It may also refer to the state procedure in France by which National Heritage protection is extended to a building, a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, a garden, a bridge, or other structure, because of their importance to France's architectural and historical cultural heritage. Both public and privately owned structures may be listed in this way, as well as movable objects. As of 2012 there were 44,236 monuments listed. The term "classification" is reserved for designation performed by the French Ministry of Culture for a monument of national-level significance. Monuments of lesser significance may be "inscribed" by various regional entities. Buildings may be given the classification (or inscription) for either their exteriors or interiors. A monument's designation could be for a building's décor, its furniture, a single room, or even a staircase. An example is ...
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