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A draisine () is a light auxiliary Rail transport, driven by service personnel, equipped to transport crew and material necessary for the maintenance of railway infrastructure.
The term is derived from the German inventor of a two-wheeled, foot-propelled conveyance Freiherr Karl Drais, who invented his Laufmaschine (German language for "running machine") in 1817, which was called Draisine in German ( vélocipède or draisienne in French) by the press.
A dandy horse, it is the first reliable claim for a practically used precursor to the bicycle, basically the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine, also called a hobby-horse.
Later, the name draisine came to be applied only to the invention used on rails and was extended to similar vehicles, even when not human-powered. Because of their low weight and small size, they can be put on and taken off the rails at any place, allowing trains to pass.
In the United States, motor-powered draisines are known as railroad speeder while human-powered ones are referred as . Vehicles that can be driven on both the highway and the rail line are called road–rail vehicles, or (after a trademark) Hy-Rails.
A specific form of pedal-powered rail-cycle used by railroad maintenance workers in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland until about 1950, are called dressin in Swedish language, dresin in Norwegian, dræsine in Danish language, and resiina in Finnish language.
The form of draisine mostly used by the rental companies uses four medium-sized railway-type steel wheels - however free to rotate individually, with the rear ones driven by bicycle-type pedal arrangements mostly without gearing. These are mounted on moderately heavy steel frames with saddles and/or benches for usually two working riders and several passengers. As the lines are mostly single-track, passing involves one party lifting the draisine entirely off the track in order to let the other one pass. Alternatively no passing is allowed and the groups of tourists use the track in each direction during different time slots. Because of friction and gearing, speeds are limited to around 4 m/s, desirable for safety. At these speeds such constructions do not derail and the vehicles can be ridden closely spaced or connected. Typical operation is shown in a promotional video of a facility on parts of the Belgian Vennbahn.
For private use the available four-wheel draisines are too heavy. Home builders can use the other basic form, the actual rail bicycle. True rail bicycles balancing on one rail should be possible and have been patented but not it seems demonstrated, except for models using electric gyroscopes or reaction wheels. Therefore the rail cycles in use are actually tricycles consisting of a bicycle on one rail and an outrigger-roller on the other. The lateral stability against tipping to the outside is limited to the weight of the outrigger plus body-lean. The bicycle is guided by a mechanism keeping the front wheel exactly on the rail, sometimes guides are used on the rear wheel as well. Painful derailments can and do occur, especially on abandoned railways with rails in poor condition and/or overgrown tracks. As the tracks can be remote and discontinuous, railbikes must be convertible for use on roads and gravel.
Riding on such disused or seldomly used tracks is an unofficial form of touristic adventure sport especially in the USA, where thousands of miles of abandoned railroad routes still exist. A portal gives information, stories and pictures on this type of railbiking.
Until 2007, Finland hosted an annual competition, Resiina-ralli ( Draisine Rally), involving several draisine teams travelling for many days on the railways from one corner of the country to another.
There are many designs of draisine. However, certain fundamentals of railbike design must be adhered to, foremost among them the reconciliation of a bicycle's stability with adaptation to riding on a railway track. Simply adding flanged wheels to a conventional bicycle would make it impossible to balance, so the typical approach to stabilization is to add an outrigger, with roller(s), across to the second rail from near the bicycle's rear wheel.
Practicality also commonly demands that the bicycle continue to be able to be ridden off rails, for the rider to travel to the tracks.
Armoured draisines were light rail motor vehicles, intended for reconnaissance, track patrolling, and other auxiliary combat tasks, Early vehicles of this kind were built in Russia during World War I. Later, often armoured cars were used as armoured draisines, after changing their wheels to railroad ones, or fitting them with additional retractable railroad rollers. Some countries, such as the USSR and Czechoslovakia, however, manufactured purpose-built armoured draisines between the wars. Polish armoured draisines were or fitted with special chassis, able to be used on rails or land.
Different armoured draisines were used during the Second World War, starting from the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany.
Prior to World War II, the Japanese Empire had already made extensive use of draisines such as the Sumida M.2593 in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Sino-Japanese War. Taki's Imperial Japanese Army: Type 91 Armored Railroad Car Taki's Japanese Imperial Army website, accessed 2023-10-28 From 1952, the Wikham Armoured Trolley was used by British security forces during the Malayan Emergency.
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