A
sail bogey or
sail trolley is a wind-driven vehicle that runs along railway tracks.
Examples
Spurn railway
The Spurn railway, built along
Spurn Head on the
Yorkshire coast of England was built in the First World War and ran until the early 1950s and included sail bogies as part of its rolling stock.
Teesmouth lifeboat
In the early days of the
Teesside lifeboat, its crew were sometimes able, subject to wind conditions, to travel out to the lifeboat station at
South Gare on a sail bogey.
Madaras Rotor Power Plant Project
In the 1930s, the US government investigated using rotating vertically mounted cylinders (90-ft tall by 22.2-ft Dia) mounted on a rake of flatcars in a closed loop on a circular track to generate electricity. The project, known as the "Madaras Rotor Power Plant", used the
Magnus Effect to transfer the wind energy into thrust to accelerate the "Train" whilst alternators fitted to the axles of the flatcars generated electricity which was fed back to the system through a trolley system.
Others
Other locations to have used sail bogies include:
-
Cliffe, Kent
-
Gosport
-
Herne Bay Pier, Kent
[Information from display at Herne Bay Museum (see Herne Bay Museum 0007.jpg)]
-
Camber Railway near Port Stanley, The Falkland Islands
-
the Dagebüll–Oland–Langeneß island railway, connecting the town of Dagebüll with the Halligen Oland and Langeneß, Germany
Replica
More recently, in 2005, a replica of a 19th-century sail bogey was built and demonstrated on the Ffestiniog Railway in
North Wales.
[ Sail on the Rail, www.douglas-self.com accessed 2023-10-28][ The Boat. Festipedia, hosted by the FR Heritage Group, accessed 2023-10-28 ]
See also
Further reading
