Michelines were a series of rubber-tyred trains developed in France in the 1930s by various rail companies and rubber-tyre manufacturer

Michelin Michelin (; ; full name: ) is a French multinational tyre manufacturing company based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ''région'' of France. It is the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world behind Bridgestone and lar ...

. Some Michelines were built in the United States by the

Budd Company The Budd Company was a 20th-century metal fabricator, a major supplier of body components to the automobile industry, and a manufacturer of stainless steel passenger rail cars, airframes, missile and space vehicles, and various defense product ...

. Most Michelines were self-propelled, but a number of

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the us ...

-hauled trainsets were also produced. Michelines offered unprecedented ride smoothness, but they soon proved to be problematic because the low load that the wheels could bear limited railcar sizes and demanded a high number of tyres (up to 20) per car. Furthermore, they were subject to flat tyres, unlike cars with steel wheels. Eventually, the Michelines gave way to rubber-tyred metros, pioneered by the RATP (Paris transit authority) which introduced them for their superior acceleration characteristics, in order to increase the capacity of their subway lines. However, as time went by, the extra complexity of rubber-tyred rolling stock meant that they were superseded by conventional steel-wheel rolling stock.

References

{{Michelin Corporation, state=autocollapse Railcars of France Michelin