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Handbook of Railway Vehicle
Dynamics
Handbook of Railway Vehicle
Dynamics
Second Edition

Edited by
Simon Iwnicki
Maksym Spiryagin
Colin Cole
Tim McSweeney
CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
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Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

© 2020 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works

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Contents
Preface..............................................................................................................................................vii
Editors................................................................................................................................................ix
Contributors.......................................................................................................................................xi

Chapter 1 Introduction...................................................................................................................1
Simon Iwnicki, Maksym Spiryagin, Colin Cole and Tim McSweeney

Chapter 2 A History of Railway Vehicle Dynamics......................................................................5

A. H. Wickens

Chapter 3 Design of Unpowered Railway Vehicles..................................................................... 43

Anna Orlova, Roman Savushkin, Iurii (Yury) Boronenko, Kirill Kyakk,
Ekaterina Rudakova, Artem Gusev, Veronika Fedorova and Nataly Tanicheva

Chapter 4 Design of Powered Rail Vehicles and Locomotives................................................. 115

Maksym Spiryagin, Qing Wu, Peter Wolfs and Valentyn Spiryagin

Chapter 5 Magnetic Levitation Vehicles.................................................................................... 165

Shihui Luo and Weihua Ma

Chapter 6 Suspension Elements and Their Characteristics....................................................... 197

Sebastian Stichel, Anna Orlova, Mats Berg and Jordi Viñolas

Chapter 7 Wheel-Rail Contact Mechanics................................................................................ 241

Jean-Bernard Ayasse, Hugues Chollet and Michel Sebès

Chapter 8 Tribology of the Wheel-Rail Contact........................................................................ 281

Ulf Olofsson, Roger Lewis and Matthew Harmon

Chapter 9 Track Design, Dynamics and Modelling..................................................................307

Wanming Zhai and Shengyang Zhu

Chapter 10 Gauging Issues.......................................................................................................... 345

David M. Johnson

Chapter 11 Railway Vehicle Derailment and Prevention............................................................ 373

Nicholas Wilson, Huimin Wu, Adam Klopp and Alexander Keylin

v
vi Contents

Chapter 12 Rail Vehicle Aerodynamics....................................................................................... 415

Hongqi Tian

Chapter 13 Longitudinal Train Dynamics and Vehicle Stability in Train Operations................ 457
Colin Cole

Chapter 14 Noise and Vibration from Railway Vehicles............................................................. 521

David Thompson, Giacomo Squicciarini, Evangelos Ntotsios and Luis Baeza

Chapter 15 Active Suspensions.................................................................................................... 579

Roger M. Goodall and T.X. Mei

Chapter 16 Dynamics of the Pantograph-Catenary System........................................................ 613

Stefano Bruni, Giuseppe Bucca, Andrea Collina and Alan Facchinetti

Chapter 17 Simulation of Railway Vehicle Dynamics................................................................ 651

Oldrich Polach, Mats Berg and Simon Iwnicki

Chapter 18 Field Testing and Instrumentation of Railway Vehicles........................................... 723

Julian Stow

Chapter 19 Roller Rigs................................................................................................................. 761

Paul D. Allen, Weihua Zhang, Yaru Liang, Jing Zeng, Henning Jung,
Enrico Meli, Alessandro Ridolfi, Andrea Rindi, Martin Heller and Joerg Koch

Chapter 20 Scale Testing Theory and Approaches...................................................................... 825

Nicola Bosso, Paul D. Allen and Nicolò Zampieri

Chapter 21 Railway Vehicle Dynamics Glossary........................................................................ 869

Tim McSweeney

Index............................................................................................................................................... 879
Preface
This is the second edition of the handbook. The first edition, published in 2006, has become the
established text in this field, is used by many researchers and has over 800 citations. We have com-
pletely reviewed all the material and updated much of the text to recognise that some significant new
theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches have been developed, and new designs of rail-
way vehicles and their components have been introduced since the publication of the first edition.
There have been rapid developments in many areas, including the application of IT through
digitisation and vastly increased access to data. Although many of the key tools and techniques
presented in the first edition are still used, most have been modified or updated, and new methods
and computer tools have been developed. In this edition, we have included new chapters covering
design of powered rail vehicles, aerodynamics of railway vehicles, maglev and the dynamics of the
pantograph-catenary system.
We hope that readers find this handbook useful. Railway transport is seeing a resurgence in
many countries and can provide efficient passenger and freight operations, but higher demands
for safe and reliable operation at higher loads and speeds mean that the dynamic performance of
vehicles and their interactions with the track and other infrastructure must be well understood.
Engineers and researchers working in this field face significant challenges and the tools and tech-
niques outlined in this handbook will assist in solving the problems faced in designing, operating
and maintaining modern railway systems.

Simon Iwnicki
Maksym Spiryagin
Colin Cole
Tim McSweeney

vii
Editors
Simon Iwnicki is professor of railway engineering at the University of Huddersfield in the UK,
where he is director of the Institute of Railway Research (IRR). The IRR has an international
reputation for its research and support to industry, providing not only valuable practical solutions
to specific problems in the industry but also making significant contributions to the understand-
ing of some of the fundamental mechanisms of the wheel-rail interaction on which the safe and
economical operation of railways depends. Professor Iwnicki is the editor-in-chief of Part F of the
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (the Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit)
and co-editor (responsible for railway matters) of the journal Vehicle System Dynamics. He was the
academic co-chair of the Rail Research UK Association (RRUKA) from 2010 to 2014, and, from
2014 to 2015, he was chair of the railway division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He is
a former member of the Scientific Committee of Shift2Rail.

Maksym Spiryagin is a professor of engineering and the deputy director of the Centre for Railway
Engineering at Central Queensland University, Australia. He received his PhD in the field of rail-
way transport in 2004 at the East Ukrainian National University. Professor Spiryagin’s involve-
ment in academia and railway industry projects includes research experience in Australia, China,
Italy, South Korea and Ukraine, involving locomotive design and traction, rail vehicle dynamics,
acoustics and real-time and software-enabled control systems, mechatronics and the development
of complex mechatronic systems using various approaches (co-simulation, software-in-the-loop,
processor-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the loop simulations).

Colin Cole is a professor of mechanical engineering and the director of the Centre for Railway
Engineering at Central Queensland University, Australia. His work history includes over 31 years
in railway industry and research roles starting in 1984, with six years working in mechanised track
maintenance in Queensland Railways. Since then, his experience has included both rolling stock
and infrastructure areas. He has worked in railway research for the past 25 years, and his 1999 PhD
thesis was on Longitudinal Train Dynamics. He has conducted a range of rail projects related to
field testing of trains, simulation of dynamics, energy studies, train braking, derailment investiga-
tion, railway standards and innovations in measurement and control devices.

Tim McSweeney is an adjunct research fellow at the Centre for Railway Engineering (CRE) at
Central Queensland University in Australia. He has over 45 years of experience in the field of
railway fixed infrastructure asset management, specialising particularly in track engineering in the
heavy-haul environment. He was the senior infrastructure manager overseeing the Bowen Basin
Coal Network for Queensland Rail from 1991 until 2001. He then joined the CRE to follow his
interest in railway research. Tim is a member of the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and a
Fellow of the Permanent Way Institution. Central Queensland University awarded him an Honorary
Master of Engineering degree in 2011. He has co-authored 2 books and 30 technical papers and
consultancy reports on various aspects of railway engineering and operations.

ix
Contributors
Paul D. Allen is a professor and assistant director of the Institute of Railway Research (IRR) at the
University of Huddersfield. As a technical expert, his specialist fields are railway vehicle dynam-
ics and wheel-rail contact mechanics. He completed a PhD on the subject of error quantification of
scaled railway roller rigs and led the concept design of the full-scale roller rig at the IRR. His wider
research interests include train braking technologies, pantograph-overhead line dynamics and the
promotion of innovation in the rail industry.

Jean-Bernard Ayasse is a retired research director. Before joining “The French Institute of Science
and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks” (IFSTTAR), France, he worked at the
Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and obtained his PhD from the University of Grenoble in 1970
and a state thesis in 1977 in solid state physics. He is a specialist in numerical simulations in the
electromagnetic and mechanical domains. His research field goes from the modelling of linear
induction motors to railway dynamics. He is the author of several innovations in the modelling of
the wheel-rail contact and of the multibody formalism implemented in the VOCO code.

Luis Baeza is professor and chair at the Technical University of Valencia in Spain. From 2016 to
2018, he was a full professor in the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of
Southampton, UK. His research area comprises various fields of railway technology, including dynam-
ics of railway vehicles and the track, vibration, corrugation of rails and wheel-rail contact mechanics.

Mats Berg is professor and head of the Road and Rail Vehicles Unit at the Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. Before joining KTH in 1993, he worked at ABB Traction in
Västerås and at the University of California at Berkeley. He obtained his PhD from Lund Institute of
Technology in 1987. His main research field is vehicle-track interaction, with emphasis on the aspects
of structural dynamics, suspension dynamics, track dynamics and wheel-rail wear. Professor Berg
has authored many papers and reports in this field and advised several PhD students. He teaches
courses on rail vehicle dynamics and general railway engineering in degree programmes as well as
for practising engineers of the railway sector (both in Sweden and internationally).

Iurii (Yury) Boronenko is professor and head of the Department of Railcars and Railcar
Maintenance at the Petersburg State Transport University in St. Petersburg, Russia. Professor
Boronenko is also the director of the Scientific Research Center ‘Vagony’. The centre is involved
in many practical fields such as monitoring the fleet of freight wagons in Russia, evaluation of the
technical condition of railway vehicles, design of new and modification of existing railcars and
implementation of repair technologies, as well as in research and consultancy projects for Russian
railways and industry. ‘Vagony’ is the testing centre certified by the Russian Federal Service to test
railway vehicles and by the Russian Maritime Register to test containers. Professor Boronenko’s
special interests include vehicle dynamics and modelling the motion of liquids in tank wagons.
For his theoretical and practical contribution in developing railway vehicles, Professor Boronenko
became a member of the Transport Academy of Russia.

Nicola Bosso is an associate professor at Politecnico di Torino. He gained his MA degree in 1996
and his PhD in machine design in 2004. After experience at the strategic research group at Fiat
Ferroviaria, he joined the railway research group at Politecnico di Torino, where he developed his
research in the railway sector, primarily concerning wheel/rail contact, multibody simulation and
experimental testing on prototypes and real vehicles. He teaches in several courses at Politecnico di
Torino, including rolling stock design.

xi
xii Contributors

Stefano Bruni is a full professor at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Mechanical Engineering,

where he teaches applied mechanics and dynamics. He is the leader of the ‘Railway Dynamics’
research group, carrying out research on rail vehicles and their interaction with the infrastructure,
with a critical mass of senior research competence. Professor Bruni has authored over 240 scientific
papers and has spent a large amount of time lecturing and consulting to industry in Italy and other
countries. He has been lead scientist for several research projects funded by the industry and by
the European Commission (EC). He is vice president of the International Association for Vehicle
System Dynamics (IAVSD) and was chairman of the IAVSD’05 international conference held in
Milano in 2005. He is an editorial board member for some international journals in the field of
railway engineering.

Giuseppe Bucca is an associate professor of applied mechanics at Politecnico di Milano, Department

of Mechanical Engineering, where he teaches applied mechanics and mechatronics. His research
activity is focussed on the dynamics and control of mechanical systems, with primary application to
railway vehicles. In particular, his main research topics are the theoretical and experimental (labo-
ratory and on-track tests) studies of the dynamical interaction between pantograph and catenary
and of the related electromechanical phenomena, and the study of railway and tramway vehicle
dynamics focussing on the wheel-rail contact phenomena, passenger comfort and running safety.
He has participated and continues to participate in several research projects funded by the EU and
in research and technical projects funded by private companies.

Hugues Chollet is researcher at IFSTTAR, France. He graduated from Université de Technologie

Compiègne (UTC) in 1984 and obtained a PhD in 1991 at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6,
on the experimental validation of Kalker’s theory for the use in wheel-rail contact. He carries out
research and consultancy work on guided transportation systems, dealing with wheel-rail contact
fatigue, derailment situations, instabilities, vibration and comfort problems.

Andrea Collina is a full professor at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Mechanical Engineering,

where he teaches applied mechanics and dynamics. He is active in the field of railway dynamics, inter-
action with infrastructure and pantograph-catenary interaction, carrying out both simulation and labo-
ratory and field-testing activities. He has been involved in EU-funded projects. He has authored over
140 scientific papers and acts as consultant to industry in Italy and other countries for railway topics.

Alan Facchinetti is an associate professor of applied mechanics at Politecnico di Milano. He grad-

uated in 2000 and received his PhD in 2004 from that same university before joining the academic
permanent staff in 2005. His research focuses on the dynamics, stability and control of mechanical
systems, with primary application to railway vehicles and to their interaction with the infrastruc-
ture. In this respect, his research activities address the dynamic behaviour of railway vehicles and
tramcars, pantograph-catenary interaction, active control, monitoring and diagnostics in railway
vehicles, and include the development of numerical and laboratory tools and the design and execu-
tion of on-track tests. He has participated and continues to participate in several research projects
funded by EU or national grants and in research and technical projects funded by private compa-
nies. He is a member of various European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization working
groups dealing with current collection systems.

Veronika Fedorova is a researcher at the Department of Integrated Studies of Track-Train

Interaction Dynamics at All-Union Research and Development Center for Transportation Technology
(St. Petersburg, Russia). She graduated from Petersburg State Transport University in 2015. She is cur-
rently a postgraduate student working on a PhD thesis in the field of railway vehicle dynamics, develop-
ing wheel-rail wear and rolling contact fatigue (RCF) simulation models and designing advanced wheel
profiles for freight wagons.
Contributors xiii

Roger M. Goodall spent 12 years at British Rail's Research Division in Derby, where he worked
on a variety of projects, including Maglev, tilting trains and active railway suspension systems.
Roger took up an academic position at Loughborough University in 1982, and he became professor
of control systems engineering in 1994. He also has a part-time professorial role at the University
of Huddersfield’s Institute of Railway Research. His research has been concerned with a variety of
practical applications of advanced control, usually for high-performance electro-mechanical sys-
tems and, for many years, specifically on active railway vehicle suspensions. Roger has served in a
variety of external roles such as a member of the board of the International Association for Vehicle
System Dynamics (IAVSD), vice president of the International Federation of Automatic Control
(IFAC) and chairman of the IMechE Railway Division. He has been a fellow of the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers for a number of years, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of
Engineering in 2007 and a fellow of IFAC in 2017.

Artem Gusev is a researcher at the Department of Integrated Studies of Train-Track Interaction

Dynamics at All-Union Research and Development Center for Transportation Technology
(St. Petersburg, Russia). He graduated from Petersburg State Transport University in 2014, com-
pleted postgraduate studies with a degree in railway rolling stock in 2018 and prepared the thesis
for PhD viva examination. He carries out research in the area of improving rolling stock dynamics
and developing freight bogies, using the finite elements method and computer simulation modelling
of railcar movement.

Matthew Harmon is a research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at

The University of Sheffield where he studies tribology. He gained his PhD in 2019 which studied
the application and mechanisms of lubricants and friction modifiers in the wheel-rail interface.
This work developed a number of test methods in the laboratory as well as is developing an in situ
method for measuring friction in interfaces. Since finishing his PhD he has continued to study the
wheel-rail interface through a variety of projects. His current focus is on the verification of adhesion
forecasts and the development of guidance for the rail industry.

Martin Heller is employed at Knorr-Bremse-Systeme für Schienenfahrzeuge, Munich, Germany,

and directs the test department with the ‘Atlas’ Roller Rig. He completed a Dr.-Ing. in mechanical
engineering on the subject of mathematical simulation of brake control systems of trains and rail-
way vehicles and has been engaged since then in R&D of railway brakes.

David M. Johnson has a BSc in civil engineering (University of Leeds) and a PhD in mechanical
engineering (Imperial College London), where his research and thesis covered ‘The Simulation of
Clearances between Trains and the Infrastructure’. His early career was at British Rail Research
and in the USA, where he specialised in track, structure and soil mechanics disciplines. This led
him to form his own business, specialising in technology development, particularly digital engi-
neering systems, through which he developed a number of laser-based measuring technologies
and started his interest in gauging. David’s company, Laser Rail, specialised in the development
of structure measuring technology, analysis of clearances and the management of gauging data.
The company is now part of the Balfour Beatty Rail group. His latest venture, a partnership
with his son, Colin, has developed gauging analysis technology to another level. Based upon
mechanistic modelling of the complete gauging system (the topic of his PhD), DGauge specialises
in matching clearance calculations to real life through processes of risk-based analysis (which
they have commercially developed as Probabilistic Gauging™), high-definition and complex rail
vehicle modelling and three-dimensional simulation, geometric swept envelope analysis of tran-
sitional curvature and other bespoke techniques. The Company’s Cloud-based gauging service
provides near-instant results to a variety of rail vehicle and infrastructure clients, both in the UK
and internationally.
xiv Contributors

Henning Jung, MSc, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Siegen. He is now a
research assistant working in the Applied Mechanics group of Professor Claus-Peter Fritzen at the
University of Siegen. His research activities are focussed on dealing with the development of mod-
ern structural health monitoring systems (SHM) for railway vehicles. Prior to this, he also worked
as a research assistant in the field of rolling mill design at Achenbach Buschhütten.

Alexander Keylin is a senior engineer in the Vehicle-Track Interaction group at Transportation

Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) in Pueblo, Colorado. He holds a BSc in mechanical engineering
from University of Pittsburgh (2011) and an MSc in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech
(2012). His work involves testing and characterisation of rail vehicles, modelling of special track
work, conducting computer simulations of vehicle-track interaction, analysis of ride quality data
and development of algorithms for processing of rail profiles and track geometry data.

Adam Klopp is a senior engineer at Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) in Pueblo,
Colorado, specialising in vehicle-track interaction and train dynamics. He has over 7 years of rail-
road research and engineering experience at TTCI. His research includes the characterisation, anal-
ysis and modelling of rail vehicles and trains. His testing experience includes static and dynamic
vehicle and track tests, compressive end load tests and impact tests. He holds a BSc in mechanical
engineering from Colorado State University (2012) and an MSc in engineering with emphasis in
railroad engineering from Colorado State University-Pueblo (2016).

Joerg Koch is employed at Knorr-Bremse-Systeme für Schienenfahrzeuge, Munich, Germany.

He has a university degree as Dipl.-Ing. in Mechanical Engineering. After university, he developed
and built a range of test rigs for railway equipment. He has been responsible for the ATLAS test rig
since 2010 and was involved in its concept, design, build, commissioning and now its operation.

Kirill Kyakk is executive director of PTK-Engineering LLC (Russia), the freight wagon fleet oper-
ating company introducing next-generation freight cars and heavy freight trains on 1520 mm gauge
railways. He obtained the PhD in 2007 at Petersburg State Transport University in St. Petersburg,
Russia. His field of scientific interest is railcar design theory and system engineering. Dr. Kyakk has
16 years of experience in the railway industry, including leadership and participation in the develop-
ment of more than 120 new freight wagon models with improved technical characteristics for the
railways of Russia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Roger Lewis is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Sheffield, where he

teaches design and tribology. He received his PhD from that university in 2000, before joining the
academic staff in 2002. His research interests are split into three areas: solving industrial wear
problems, application and development of a novel ultrasonic technique for machine element contact
analysis and design of engineering components and machines. He has worked on a number of proj-
ects related to the wheel-rail interface, including understanding fundamental mechanisms and mod-
elling of wheel and rail materials, measurements of wheel-rail interface conditions and rail stress,
friction management and understanding of low adhesion. In 2019, he was appointed as a Royal
Academy of Engineering Research Chair in ‘Wheel/Rail Interface Low Adhesion Management’.
In collaboration with the Rail and Safety Standards Board, he will now undertake a 5-year pro-
gramme of work in this area.

Yaru Liang is a PhD student at the State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong
University, China. She received her bachelor’s degree in vehicle engineering at Dalian Jiaotong
University in 2010. She then continued her studies for the master’s degree course from 2010 to 2012
and later became a PhD student. Her research interests are in vehicle dynamics simulation and roller
rig testing.
Contributors xv

Shihui Luo is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong
University (SWJTU), China. He earned his BEng, MEng and PhD in 1985, 1988 and 1991, respec-
tively, from the Department of Marine Power Machinery Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University,
China. He then joined SWJTU and started research on vehicle dynamics. During this period, he
stayed 1 year in the Duewag Factory, Siemens VT, as a trainee. He teaches in postgraduate courses.
He participated in dynamics simulation projects for the Shanghai maglev train in 2002 and has
continued research since then for the development of maglev vehicles.

Weihua Ma is a researcher at the Traction Power State Key Laboratory (TPL), Southwest Jiaotong
University (SWJTU), China. He was awarded a BEng degree in vehicle engineering from Shandong
University, China, in 2002 and a PhD degree in vehicle engineering from SWJTU in 2008. He has
worked at TPL since 2008 and completed his postdoctoral fellowship during this period in a joint
project of CRRC-SWJTU at Qishuyan Co., Ltd. His research interests include locomotive and
heavy-haul train dynamics as well as the maglev train. In recent years, he has focussed on develop-
ing maglev for regional applications, with an operational speed range of 160 ~ 200 km/h.

T.X. Mei is a professor in control engineering at the University of Salford, where he leads a research
group at the School of Computing, Science and Engineering, carrying out leading-edge research in
the area of control and systems study for railway vehicles. Professor Mei has a strong background
in railway engineering and substantial expertise in vehicle dynamics and traction control. He has
given invited research seminars at an international level and published many papers in leading
academic journals and international conferences, which explore the application of advanced control
techniques and the use of active components. Professor Mei is one of the most active researchers
worldwide in the latest fundamental research into active steering and system integration for railway
vehicles and has made significant contributions to several leading-edge research projects in the
field. His educational background includes BSc (1982, Shanghai Tiedao), MSc (1985, Shanghai
Tiedao), MSc (1991, Manchester) and PhD (1994, Loughborough).

Enrico Meli received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2004 and his master
degree in mathematical engineering in 2006 from the School of Engineering of the University
of Florence. He received his PhD in mechanism and machine theory in 2010 from the School
of Engineering of the University of Bologna. In 2014, Dr. Enrico Meli won the prestigious SIR
2014 – Scientific Independence of Young Researchers Project, funded by the Italian Minister
for Education, University and Research. He has been an assistant professor at the Department of
Industrial Engineering of the University of Florence since 2015. Currently, his main research inter-
ests include vehicle dynamics, tribology, turbomachinery, rotor dynamics, robotics and automation.
In these fields, Dr. Enrico Meli is the author of over 50 publications in international journals and
over 120 publications in Proceedings of International Congresses.

Evangelos Ntotsios is a research fellow at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research
(ISVR), University of Southampton. Before joining the ISVR in 2013, he worked at the School of
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University and obtained his PhD
from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Thessaly (Greece) in 2010. He has
participated in EPSRC-funded research projects, including ‘MOTIV: Modelling of Train Induced
Vibrations’ and ‘Track to the Future’. His research interests include ground-borne railway noise and
vibration as well as structural vibration and system identification.

Ulf Olofsson has been professor in tribology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) since
2006. Before joining KTH, he worked at the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute
with tribological material and component testing. He obtained his Licentiate of Engineering
degree from Chalmers University of Technology in 1994 and his PhD from the Royal Institute of
xvi Contributors

Technology in 1996. Dr. Olofsson has 20 years of research experience on the tribology of the wheel-
rail contact. His main research interests include interfaces and especially simulation and prediction
of friction and wear, mainly applied to problems in mechanical, automotive and railway engineer-
ing. New research interests include airborne particles from wear processes such as in disc brakes and
the railway wheel to rail contact.

Anna Orlova is deputy director in scientific and technical development for Research and Production
Corporation ‘United Wagon Company’ and CEO of its subsidiary, the All-Union Research and
Development Center for Transportation Technology (St. Petersburg, Russia), working on the devel-
opment of innovative freight wagons and their components for CIS, North American, European
and other markets. United Wagon Company carries out the full cycle of research and development
of freight wagons, starting from marketing, design and prototype production, production technol-
ogy development, preliminary and operational testing, development of maintenance strategies and
repair technology. Dr. Orlova’s special interests include optimisation of running gear parameters for
dynamic performance, evaluation of design schemes and the development of simulation models and
testing methods. Dr. Orlova is a supervisor of postgraduate students at Petersburg State Transport
University and the author of several textbooks on bogie design and multibody dynamics simulation.

Oldrich Polach is an independent consultant and assessor, and an honorary professor at the Technische
Universität Berlin. From 2001 to 2016, he was chief engineer dynamics in Bombardier Transportation,
Winterthur, Switzerland, responsible for dynamics specialists in Business Unit Bogies Europe. He is
a well-recognised expert in railway vehicle dynamics and wheel-rail contact. He acted for 20 years
as a member of the working group ‘Interaction Vehicle-Track’ of the European Committee for
Standardisation CEN TC 256 and is accredited by the Railway Federal Authority in Germany for the
assessment of railway vehicles. Professor Polach teaches railway vehicle dynamics at the ETH Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Zürich and at the Technische Universität Berlin. He is a member of
the editorial boards of the international journals Vehicle System Dynamics, the International Journal of
Railway Technology and the International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems.

Alessandro Ridolfi is currently an assistant professor within the Department of Industrial

Engineering (DIEF) at the University of Florence (UNIFI). He has also been an adjunct professor at
Syracuse University in Florence since 2015, teaching dynamics. He graduated in mechanical engi-
neering from UNIFI in 2010 and received his PhD degree in industrial engineering from UNIFI in
2014. At the beginning of his PhD, he worked on railway vehicle localisation and wheel-rail adhe-
sion modelling. His current research interests are underwater and industrial robotics, sensor-based
navigation of vehicles, vehicle dynamics and bio-robotics. He is co-author of more than 80 journal
and conference papers on vehicle dynamics, robotics and mechatronics topics.

Andrea Rindi received his PhD in 1999 from the University of Bologna, Italy. He is currently
associate professor in machine theory with the School of Engineering of the University of Florence.
He is cofounder and coordinator of the Laboratory of Mechatronics and Dynamic Modelling (MDM
Lab). His current research interests include vehicle dynamics, hardware in-the-loop (HIL) simula-
tion and automation in transport systems.

Ekaterina Rudakova is head of the Department of Integrated Studies of Track-Train Interaction

Dynamics at All-Union Research and Development Center for Transportation Technology
(St. Petersburg, Russia). She obtained her PhD in 2005 in railway rolling stock from Petersburg
State Transport University. The department carries out science-based research in the area of estima-
tion of rolling stock dynamic characteristics, track forces and dynamic loading of railcar elements.
Contributors xvii

Theoretical research, coupled with testing and experimental results, allows to perfect simulation
models of railcar movement and computational methods. Dr. Rudakova’s special interests include
computer simulation modelling, design and developing of bogie suspensions.

Roman Savushkin is a member of the board of directors and CEO of Research and Production
Corporation ‘United Wagon Company’ PJSC (MOEX: UWGN). He received degrees from the
Petersburg State Transport University and the University of Antwerp’s Management School. Roman
Savushkin holds the scientific degree of PhD in technical sciences and is an acting professor at the
Russian University of Transport (MIIT). His fields of research include theory, numerical simula-
tion and experimental evaluation of structural strength, durability, dynamic performance and track
interaction of railway vehicles; structural fatigue theory and simulation of metal structures; theory
and simulation of wheel-rail interaction; theory of casting and welding production processes includ-
ing automation and robotics; design of railway freight wagons and their major components; and the
economics of railway transport. He is the author of multiple papers published in Russian national
and international scientific journals.

Michel Sebès is research engineer at IFSTTAR, France. Prior to joining IFSTTAR, he spent 13
years in the service industry, where he carried out studies in the fields of structural mechanics and
numerical simulation. He obtained a Master of Science and Engineering degree from the Ecole
Centrale de Nantes in 1989 in the field of structural mechanics. His main activities are centred on
the development of the VOCO code, dedicated to guided transport dynamics, particularly the last
wheel rail contact extensions.

Valentyn Spiryagin received his PhD in the field of railway transport in 2004 at the East Ukrainian
National University at Lugansk. His research activities include rail vehicle dynamics, multibody
simulation, control systems and vehicle structural analysis. He currently lives in Russia and works
as a railway consultant on vehicle dynamics and design, including vehicle structural engineering,
mechatronic suspension systems for locomotives, locomotive traction and embedded software
development.

Giacomo Squicciarini is a lecturer at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR),
University of Southampton. He joined the ISVR in 2012 after obtaining his PhD at Politecnico di
Milano studying the acoustics of piano soundboards. His main areas of research are related to rail-
way noise and vibration, including rolling noise, curve squeal and measurement techniques. He is
also active in vibroacoustics, structural vibration and musical instrument acoustics. He has written
20 papers in refereed journals and co-authored various conference contributions. He teaches under-
graduate and master’s students at the University of Southampton.

Sebastian Stichel is professor in Rail Vehicle Dynamics and head of the Department of Aeronautical
and Vehicle Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He is vice
chairman of the European Rail Research Advisory Council. Since 2011, he has been director of the
KTH Railway Group, a multidisciplinary research centre that deals with most aspects of Railway
Technology. He holds a BSc (1989) and an MSc (1992) in vehicle engineering and a PhD (1996)
in vehicle dynamics from Technische Universität Berlin. From 2000 to 2010, he was employed at
Bombardier Transportation in Sweden, where, from 2003, he headed its Vehicle Dynamics depart-
ment with employees in Sweden, Germany, UK and France. Professor Stichel has a primary research
interest in the dynamic vehicle-track interaction, mainly using multibody simulation; the main
concerns are improved ride comfort and reduced wheel and track damage. He is also involved in
research on the interaction between pantograph and catenary and active suspension for rail vehicles.
xviii Contributors

Julian Stow is assistant director at the Institute of Railway Research at the University of Huddersfield.
He has 18 years of experience in the railway industry, specialising in rail vehicle dynamics and
wheel-rail interface engineering, and has led a wide range of research and consultancy projects for
the rail industry of Great Britain in these areas. These include investigating the causes of rolling
contact fatigue and other wheel and rail defects, simulation for running acceptance, problem solving
on current fleets, safety and maintenance standards development and wheel-rail interface manage-
ment for existing and new build light rail and metro systems. He is currently responsible for the
delivery of a programme of research work under the strategic partnership between the Rail Safety
and Standards Board and the University of Huddersfield. Julian is a chartered engineer and a Fellow
of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Nataly Tanicheva is a junior professor at the Department of Railcars and Railcar Maintenance at
Petersburg State Transport University in St Petersburg, Russia, and a researcher at the Scientific Research
Centre ‘Vagony’, with a special interest in design of rolling stock and its components. She obtained her
PhD in 2013 in articulated railway flat wagons from Petersburg State Transport University.

David Thompson is professor of railway noise and vibration at the Institute of Sound and Vibration
Research (ISVR), University of Southampton. Before joining the ISVR in 1996, he worked at British
Rail Research in Derby, UK, and at TNO Institute of Applied Physics in Delft, The Netherlands,
and obtained his PhD from the ISVR in 1990. He has written over 160 papers in refereed journals as
well as a book on railway noise and vibration, which has also been translated into Chinese. He is the
main author of the TWINS software for railway rolling noise. His research interests include a wide
range of aspects of railway noise and vibration as well as noise control, vibroacoustics and structural
vibration. He teaches undergraduate- and master-level courses.

Hongqi Tian is a professor of Central South University at Changsha in Hunan, Peoples Republic
of China. She is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Professor Tian is cur-
rently president of Central South University and is a past vice president of the Chinese Academy
of Engineering. She was awarded her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in railway locomotive
vehicles and a PhD degree in fluid mechanics. She has been engaged in the railway science and tech-
nology field over several decades. Under Professor Tian’s leadership, her research team exploited
the research directions of railway vehicle aerodynamics and railway vehicle collision dynamics;
established the aerodynamic design theory, technology and method system of high-speed trains;
proposed the safety protection technology of train collision; and established the safety protection
technology system for railway operations in windy environments. The team developed the 500 km/h
moving model rig for the aerodynamic testing of high-speed trains and the actual vehicle impact test
platform. These test qualifications are recognised in the relevant field around the world. In addition,
the team developed the strong wind monitoring and warning system for the Qinghai-Tibet railway
line, designed the shape of the first Chinese high-speed train and proposed the first crashworthiness
and energy-absorbing vehicle design in China. The team has participated in the research and con-
struction of all high-speed railway lines in China, including the railway lines of Beijing-Shanghai,
Beijing-Guangzhou and the Qinghai-Tibet railway line that is characterised by a frigid plateau.

Jordi Viñolas is dean and professor of the School of Engineering at Nebrija University. He has pre-
viously held positions as head of European Projects at Bantec and head of TECNUN (University of
Navarra) and CEIT. His scientific interests are focussed on machine dynamics, noise and vibration,
railway dynamics and infrastructure. He has published around 60 scientific papers in areas such as
vehicle dynamics, rail/vehicle interaction and other topics linked to the performance optimisation
of vehicle and machine components. He has directly supervised 16 PhD theses and more than 50
MSc theses. His courses are machine elements design, noise and vibration and also mechanical
fatigue analysis. Dr. Viñolas has worked as an evaluator for the European Commission and was one
Contributors xix

of the promoters of European Rail Research Network of Excellence (EURNEX). He is a member

of the Editorial Board of the IMechE Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit and of the International
Journal of Rail Transportation.

A. H. Wickens was educated as an aeronautical engineer at Loughborough and University of

London. His 11 years in the aircraft industry culminated as head of Aeroelastics on the Avro Blue
Steel missile. He joined British Railways Research in 1962 to carry out research into the dynam-
ics of railway vehicles. He was director of Research from 1971–1983 and director of Engineering
Development and Research from 1983–1989. From 1987 to 1990, Alan Wickens was chairman of
the Office for Research and Experiments of the International Union of Railways in Utrecht. He was
professor of dynamics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Loughborough University
in 1989–1992 and subsequently Visiting Industrial Professor, where his research interest was in the
active guidance and dynamic stability of innovative railway vehicles. He is an honorary member of
the Association for Vehicle System Dynamics.

Nicholas Wilson (BSME, Cornell University, 1980) is chief scientist at the Transportation
Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) in Pueblo, Colorado, where he has worked since 1980, specialis-
ing in rail vehicle dynamics and wheel-rail interaction. He leads TTCI’s Vehicle-Track Interaction
group and the team of engineers developing TTCI’s NUCARS® multibody vehicle-track dynamic
interaction software. Recently, he has been working on flange climb derailment research, derail-
ment investigations of rail vehicles, wheel-rail wear and RCF studies. He has also been working
on developing rail vehicle dynamic performance specifications for, and analysing performance of,
freight and passenger vehicles and trains to carry high-level radioactive material.

Huimin Wu (PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2000) retired in

May 2018 from her position as a scientist in the Vehicle-Track Interaction group at Transportation
Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) in Pueblo, Colorado. She worked for more than 26 years at TTCI in
the simulation, analysis and testing of railway vehicles. Her research carried over into areas includ-
ing vehicle dynamics, vehicle-track interaction, wheel flange climb derailment criteria, computation
methodology of studying wheel-rail contact, NUCARS development, wheel-rail profile design and
rail grinding. She has presented papers at international conferences on vehicle-track interaction and
published a number of reports on consultancy work carried out for the railways.

Qing Wu is a research fellow at the Centre for Railway Engineering, Central Queensland University
(CQU), Australia. His research expertise and interests include parallel computing, 3D train system
dynamics, track dynamics and multiobjective optimisations. Dr. Wu has authored more than 50
journal articles and a simulation software. He has conducted a number of railway research and
consultancy projects ranging from track dynamics to vehicle and train dynamics. His education
background includes a BEng (2010) and MEng (2012) from Southwest Jiaotong University, China,
and a PhD from CQU (2016).

Peter Wolfs is a professor of electrical engineering at Central Queensland University, Rockhampton,

Australia. His research interests include railway power supply and traction systems, smart-grid
technology, distributed renewable resources and energy storage and their impact on system capacity
and power quality, the support of weak rural feeders and the remote-area power supply. Prof. Wolfs
is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE).

Nicolò Zampieri is assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
of the Politecnico di Torino. He received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in mechanical
engineering from that university in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and was awarded his PhD in 2014
xx Contributors

for the dissertation regarding the development of monitoring systems for railway applications. His
research interests are railway vehicle dynamics and monitoring, modelling of wheel-rail/roller con-
tact, wear and RCF. His current research activity concerns the design of test benches for railway
applications and the development of specific applications for railway vehicle monitoring. Nicolò
Zampieri is co-author of more than 30 scientific publications.

Jing Zeng is professor of railway vehicle system dynamics at the State Key Laboratory of Traction
Power, Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU), China. He obtained his PhD in Dynamic
Simulation of Railway Vehicle Systems at SWJTU in 1991. His expertise covers novel bogie design,
dynamic performance simulation and measurement techniques. In recent years, his research has
mainly focussed on parameter optimal design, dynamic simulation and laboratory and field tests of
high-speed trains. He has won two first-class and one second-class prizes of the State Scientific and
Technological Progress Award.

Wanming Zhai is chair professor of railway engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU)
in China and is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, Dr. Zhai has been
a full professor and director of the Train and Track Research Institute, which is affiliated to the State
Key Laboratory of Traction Power of SWJTU. In 1999, he was appointed Chang Jiang Chair Professor
by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Currently, he is the chairman of the Academic Committee of
Southwest Jiaotong University. Professor Zhai’s research activities are mainly in the field of railway
system dynamics, focussing on vehicle-track dynamic interaction and train-track-bridge interac-
tions. He established a new theoretical framework of vehicle-track coupled dynamics and invented
new methodologies for solving large-scale train-track-bridge interaction problems. His models and
methods have been successfully applied to more than 20 large-scale field engineering projects for the
railway network in China, mostly for high-speed railways. He is editor-in-chief of the International
Journal of Rail Transportation and a trustee member of the International Association for Vehicle
System Dynamics. He also serves as the president of the Chengdu Association for Science and
Technology, vice president of the Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and vice
president of the Chinese Society for Vibration Engineering.

Weihua Zhang is a distinguished professor of the ‘Cheung Kong Scholars’ Program of China,
winner of the ‘National Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars’ and chief scientist of
‘973 Program’, the National Basic Research Program. In 2012, he was awarded the Guanghua
Award of Engineering Technology. His doctoral dissertation was listed among ‘National Top 100
Outstanding Doctoral Dissertations’ in 2000. Professor Zhang served as an expert on the General
Planning Group for Autonomous Innovation & Joint Action Plan for China’s High-Speed Trains and
an expert of the General Planning Group for the China-standard Electrical Multiple Units (CEMU)
Development Program.

Shengyang Zhu is an associate professor at the Train and Track Research Institute, affiliated to
the State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) in China.
He graduated from SWJTU with a PhD degree in rail transportation engineering in 2015. He had
research experience at Rice University, USA, as an award holder from the China Scholarship
Council for 18 months since 2012. Dr. Zhu has published more than 30 papers in refereed high-level
journals, including 22 papers as the first author or corresponding author, and he has given several
keynote or invited presentations in international conferences and seminars. His research interests
include a wide range of aspects of train-track interaction as well as track vibration control, track
damage mechanisms and structural health monitoring. He has worked on a number of national key
projects related to long-term dynamic performance of train and track systems, as well as industry-
funded projects related to train induced vibration problems. He supervises graduate students in
railway system dynamics, and he is a PhD thesis (international) examiner for some universities.
 1 Introduction
Simon Iwnicki, Maksym Spiryagin, Colin Cole
and Tim McSweeney

CONTENTS
1.1 Structure of the Handbook........................................................................................................1

The principal aim of this handbook is to present a detailed introduction to the main issues influenc-
ing the dynamic behaviour of railway vehicles, and a summary of the history and the state of the
art of the analytical and computer tools and techniques that are used in this field around the world.
The level of technical detail is intended to be sufficient to allow analysis of common practical situ-
ations, but references are made to other published material for those who need more detail in spe-
cific areas. The main readership will be engineers working in the railway industry worldwide and
researchers working on issues connected with railway vehicle behaviour, but it should also prove
useful to those wishing to gain a basic knowledge of topics outside their specialist technical area.

1.1 STRUCTURE OF THE HANDBOOK

The topics covered in this handbook are the main areas that impact the dynamic behaviour of
railway vehicles and are intended to present the existing solutions in this area from a multidisci-
plinary perspective. These include the numerical and tribological analysis of the wheel-rail inter-
face, general railway vehicle design and architecture, suspension and suspension component design,
simulation and testing of electrical and mechanical systems, interaction with the surrounding infra-
structure and noise and vibration generation. The handbook is international in scope and draws
examples from around the world, but several chapters have a more specific focus, where a particular
local limitation or need has led to the development of specific techniques or tools.
For example, the chapter on longitudinal train dynamics and vehicle stability expands upon the
longitudinal train dynamics chapter in the first edition and mainly uses Australian examples of the
issues related to longitudinal dynamics on their heavy-haul lines, where very long trains are used
to transport bulk freight. Similarly, the issue of structure gauging largely uses the UK as a case
study, because it is there that historic lines through dense-population centres have resulted in a very
restricted loading gauge. The desire to run high-speed trains in this situation has led to the use of
highly developed techniques to permit full advantage of the loading gauge to be taken.
The history of the field is presented by Alan H. Wickens in Chapter 2, from the earliest thoughts
of George Stephenson about the dynamic behaviour of a wheelset through the development of theo-
retical principles to the application of modern computing techniques. Professor Wickens was one of
the modern pioneers of these methods and, as director of research at British Rail Research, played
a key role in the practical application of vehicle dynamics knowledge to high-speed freight and pas-
senger vehicles.
Chapters 3 and 4 set out the basic structure of railway vehicles. In Chapter 3, Anna Orlova,
Roman Savushkin, Iurii(Yury) Boronenko, Kirill Kyakk, Ekaterina Rudakova, Artem Gusev,
Veronika Fedorova and Nataly Tanicheva outline and explain the basic structure of the railway
coaches and wagons and the different types of running gear that are commonly used. Chapter 4
covers the design of powered railway vehicles and locomotives. Maksym Spiryagin, Qing Wu, Peter
Wolfs and Valentyn Spiryagin explain the type and structure of locomotives in service and the

1
2 Handbook of Railway Vehicle Dynamics

different types of traction system used. Magnetic levitation vehicles are described in Chapter 5 by
Shihui Luo and Weihua Ma. MagLev technology has been around for some time but does not yet
seem to have achieved full commercialisation. The likely trends are explored in Chapter 5.
Chapter 6 explores the detail of the key suspension components that make up the running gear
of typical railway vehicles. Sebastian Stichel, Anna Orlova, Mats Berg and Jordi Viñolas show how
these components can be represented mathematically and give practical examples from different
vehicles. The key area of any study of railway vehicle behaviour is the contact between the wheels
and the rails. An understanding of all the forces that support and guide the vehicle pass through
this small contact patch and of the nature of these forces is vital to any analysis of the general vehi-
cle behaviour. The equations that govern these forces are derived and explained by Jean-Bernard
Ayasse, Hugues Chollet and Michel Sebès in Chapter 7. They include an analysis of the normal
contact that governs the size and shape of the contact patch and the stresses in the wheel and rail,
and also the tangential problem, where slippage or creep in the contact patch produces the creep
forces which accelerate, brake and guide the vehicle. The specific area of tribology applied to the
wheel-rail contact is explained by Ulf Olofsson, Roger Lewis and Matthew Harmon in Chapter 8.
The track on which railway vehicles run is clearly a significant part of the dynamic system, and
Wanming Zhai and Shengyang Zhu present the dynamics and modelling of various railway track
structures in Chapter 9, as well as the interaction between track and train. Chapter 10 covers the
unique railway problem of gauging, where the movement of a railway vehicle means that it sweeps
through a space that is larger than it would occupy if it moved in a perfectly straight or curved path.
Precise knowledge of this space or envelope is essential to avoid vehicles hitting parts of the sur-
rounding infrastructure or each other. David M. Johnson has developed computer techniques that
allow the gauging process to be carried out to permit vehicle designers and operators to ensure
safety at the same time as maximising vehicle size and speed, and he explains the philosophies and
techniques in this chapter.
The avoidance of derailment and its potentially catastrophic consequences are of fundamen-
tal concern to all railway engineers. In Chapter 11, Nicholas Wilson, Huimin Wu, Adam Klopp
and Alexander Keylin explain how railway vehicle derailment is prevented. They explore the main
causes and summarise the limits that have been set by standards to try to prevent these occurrences
and cover the special case of independently rotating wheels and several possible preventative mea-
sures that can be taken.
In Chapter 12, Hongqi Tian explains the use of wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics
to improve the understanding of the effects of aerodynamics on the dynamic behaviour of railway
vehicles.
Longitudinal train dynamics are covered by Colin Cole in Chapter 13. This is an aspect of vehi-
cle dynamics that is sometimes ignored, but it becomes of major importance in heavy-haul railways,
where very long and heavy trains lead to extremely high coupling forces. This chapter also covers
rolling resistance and braking systems.
Chapter 14 deals with noise and vibration problems. David Thompson, Giacomo Squicciarini,
Evangelos Ntotsios and Luis Baeza explain the key issues, including rolling noise caused by rail
surface roughness, impact noise and curve squeal. They outline the basic theory required for a study
in this area and also show how computer tools can be used to reduce the problem of noise. The effect
of vibrations on human comfort is also discussed, and the effect of vehicle design is considered.
In Chapter 15, Roger M. Goodall and T.X. Mei summarise the possible ways in which active
suspensions can allow vehicle designers to provide advantages that are not possible with passive
suspensions. The basic concepts from tilting bodies to active secondary and primary suspension
components are explained in detail and with examples. Recent tests on a prototype actively con-
trolled bogie are presented, and limitations of the current actuators and sensors are explored before
conclusions are drawn about the technology that will be seen in future vehicles.
Computer tools are now widely used in vehicle dynamics, and some specialist software pack-
ages allow all aspects of vehicle-track interaction to be simulated. In Chapter 17, Oldrich Polach,
Introduction 3

Mats Berg and Simon Iwnicki explain the historical development and state of the art of the methods
that can be used to set up models of railway vehicles and to predict their behaviour as they run on
typical track or over specific irregularities or defects. The material of previous chapters is drawn
upon to inform the models of suspension elements and wheel-rail contact, and the types of analysis
that are typically carried out are described. Typical simulation tasks are presented from the view-
point of a vehicle designer attempting to optimise suspension performance, and the key issue of
validation of the results of computer models is reviewed.
In Chapter 18, Julian Stow outlines the key aspects of field testing, including the procedures
typically used during the acceptance process to demonstrate safe operation of railway vehicles. An
alternative to field testing is to use a roller rig on which a vehicle can be run in relative safety, with
conditions being varied in a controlled manner. In Chapter 19, Paul D. Allen, Weihua Zhang, Yaru
Liang, Jing Zeng, Henning Jung, Enrico Meli, Alessandro Ridolfi, Andrea Rindi, Martin Heller and
Joerg Koch summarise the characteristics of the main types of roller rig and the ways in which they
are used. Chapter 19 also reviews the history of existing roller rigs, summarising the key details
of examples of the main types. Chapter 20 extends the theme to scale testing, which has been used
effectively for research into wheel-rail contact. In this chapter, Nicola Bosso, Paul D. Allen and
Nicolò Zampieri describe the possible scaling philosophies that can be used and how these have
been applied to scaled roller rigs. In Chapter 21, Tim McSweeney provides a glossary of terms
relevant to railway vehicle dynamics.
 2 A History of Railway
Vehicle Dynamics
A. H. Wickens

CONTENTS
2.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................................5
2.2 Coning and the Kinematic Oscillation.....................................................................................6
2.3 Concepts of Curving................................................................................................................8
2.4 Dynamic Response, Hunting and the Bogie............................................................................ 9
2.5 Innovations for Improved Steering........................................................................................ 12
2.6 Carter..................................................................................................................................... 13
2.7 Wheel-Rail Geometry............................................................................................................ 17
2.8 Creep...................................................................................................................................... 18
2.9 Matsudaira............................................................................................................................. 19
2.10 The ORE Competition........................................................................................................... 19
2.11 The Complete Solution of the Hunting Problem.................................................................... 21
2.12 Later Research on Curving.................................................................................................... 23
2.13 Dynamic Response to Track Geometry.................................................................................26
2.14 Suspension Design Concepts and Optimisation....................................................................26
2.14.1 Two-Axle Vehicles and Bogies................................................................................26
2.14.2 Forced Steering........................................................................................................ 27
2.14.3 Three-Axle Vehicles................................................................................................28
2.14.4 Unsymmetrical Configurations................................................................................28
2.14.5 The Three-Piece Bogie............................................................................................28
2.14.6 Independently Rotating Wheels............................................................................... 29
2.14.7 Articulated Trains.................................................................................................... 29
2.15 Derailment............................................................................................................................. 30
2.16 Active Suspensions................................................................................................................. 30
2.17 The Development of Computer Simulation........................................................................... 32
2.18 The Expanding Domain of Rail Vehicle Dynamics.............................................................. 33
References.........................................................................................................................................34

2.1 INTRODUCTION
The railway train running along a track is one of the most complicated dynamical systems in engi-
neering. Many bodies comprise the system, and so, it has many degrees of freedom. The bodies that
make up the vehicle can be connected in various ways, and a moving interface connects the vehicle
with the track. This interface involves the complex geometry of the wheel tread and the railhead and
non-conservative frictional forces generated by relative motion in the contact area.
The technology of this complex system rests on a long history. In the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, development concentrated on the prime mover and the possibility of traction
using adhesion. Strength of materials presented a major problem. Even though speeds were low,
dynamic loads applied to the track were of concern, and so the earliest vehicles adopted elements

5
6 Handbook of Railway Vehicle Dynamics

of suspension taken from horse carriage practice. Above all, the problem of guidance was resolved
by the almost universal adoption of the flanged wheel in the early nineteenth century, the result of
empirical development and dependent on engineering intuition.
Operation of the early vehicles led to verbal descriptions of their dynamic behaviour such as
Stephenson’s description of the kinematic oscillation discussed later. Later in the nineteenth cen-
tury, Redtenbacher and Klingel introduced the first simple mathematical models of the action of the
coned wheelset, but they had virtually no impact on engineering practice. In practice, the balancing
of the reciprocating masses of the steam locomotive assumed much greater importance. At this
stage, artefacts, not equations, defined engineering knowledge.
A catastrophic bridge failure led to the first analytical model of the interaction between vehicle
and flexible track in 1849.
The increasing size of the steam locomotive increased the problem of the forces generated in
negotiating curves, and in 1883, Mackenzie gave the first essentially correct description of curving.
This became the basis of a standard calculation carried out in design offices throughout the era of
the steam locomotive.
As train speeds increased, problems of ride quality, particularly in the lateral direction, became
more important. The introduction of the electric locomotive at the end of the nineteenth century
involved Carter, a mathematical electrical engineer, in the problem, with the result that a realistic
model of the forces acting between wheel and rail was proposed and the first calculations of lateral
stability carried out.
Generally, empirical engineering development was able to keep abreast of the requirements of
ride quality and safety until the middle of the twentieth century. Then, increasing speeds of trains
and the greater potential risks arising from instability stimulated a more scientific approach to
vehicle dynamics. Realistic calculations on which design decisions were based were achieved in the
1960s, and, as the power of the digital computer increased, so did the scope of engineering calcula-
tions, leading to today’s powerful modelling tools.
This chapter tells the story of this conceptual and analytical development. It concentrates on the
most basic problems associated with stability, response to track geometry and behaviour in curves
of the railway vehicle, and most attention is given to the formative stage in which an understanding
was gained. Progress in the last 20 years is not discussed, as the salient points are discussed later in
the relevant chapters. As a result, many important aspects such as track dynamics, noise generation
and other high-frequency (in this context, above about 15 Hz) phenomena are excluded.

2.2 CONING AND THE KINEMATIC OSCILLATION

The conventional railway wheelset, which consists of two wheels mounted on a common axle, has a
long history [1] and evolved empirically. In the early days of the railways, speeds were low, and the
objectives were to reduce rolling resistance (so that the useful load that could be hauled by horses
could be multiplied) and to solve problems of strength and wear.
The flanged wheel running on a rail existed as early as the seventeenth century. The position of
the flanges was on the inside, outside or even on both sides of the wheels and was still being debated
in the 1820s. Wheels were normally fixed to the axle, though freely rotating wheels were sometimes
used in order to reduce friction in curves. To start with, the play allowed between wheel flange and
rail was minimal.
Coning was introduced partly to reduce the rubbing of the flange on the rail and partly to ease
the motion of the vehicle round curves. It is not known when coning of the wheel tread was first
introduced. It would be natural to provide a smooth curve uniting the flange with the wheel tread,
and wear of the tread would contribute to this. Moreover, once wheels were made of cast iron, taper
was normal foundry practice. In the early 1830s, the flange way clearance was opened up to reduce
the lateral forces between wheel and rail, so that, typically, about 10 to 12 mm of lateral displace-
ment was allowed before flange contact.
A History of Railway Vehicle Dynamics 7

Coning of the wheel tread was well established by 1821. George Stephenson in his observations
on edge and tram railways [2] stated that ‘It must be understood the form of edge railway wheels
are conical that is the outer is rather less than the inner diameter about 3/16 of an inch. Then from a
small irregularity of the railway the wheels may be thrown a little to the right or a little to the left,
when the former happens the right wheel will expose a larger and the left one a smaller diameter to
the bearing surface of the rail which will cause the latter to lose ground of the former but at the same
time in moving forward it gradually exposes a greater diameter to the rail while the right one on
the contrary is gradually exposing a lesser which will cause it to lose ground of the left one but will
regain it on its progress as has been described alternately gaining and losing ground of each other
which will cause the wheels to proceed in an oscillatory but easy motion on the rails’.
This is a very clear description of what is now called the kinematic oscillation, as shown in
Figure 2.1.
The rolling behaviour of the wheelset suggests why it adopted its present form. If the flange is on
the inside, the conicity is positive, and, as the flange approaches the rail, there will be a strong steer-
ing action, tending to return the wheelset to the centre of the track. If the flange is on the outside,
the conicity is negative, and the wheelset will simply run into the flange and remain in contact as the
wheelset moves along the track. Moreover, consider motion in a sharp curve in which the wheelset
is in flange contact. If the flange is on the inside, the lateral force applied by the rail to the leading
wheelset is applied to the outer wheel and will be combined with an enhanced vertical load, thus
diminishing the risk of derailment. If the flange is on the outside, the lateral force applied by the
rail is applied to the inner wheel, which has a reduced vertical load, and thus, the risk of derailment
is increased.
As was explicitly stated by Brunel in 1838 [3], it can be seen that, for small displacements from
the centre of straight or slightly curved track, the primary mode of guidance is conicity, and it is on
sharper curves and switches and crossings that the flanges become the essential mode of guidance.
Lateral oscillations caused by coning were experienced from the early days of the railways. One
solution to the oscillation problem that has been proposed from time to time, even down to modern
times, was to fit wheels with cylindrical treads. However, in this case, if the wheels were rigidly
mounted on the axle, very slight errors in parallelism would induce large lateral displacements that
would be limited by flange contact. Thus, a wheelset with cylindrical treads tends to run in continu-
ous flange contact.
In 1883, Klingel gave the first mathematical analysis of the kinematic oscillation [4] and derived
the relationship between the wavelength Λ the wheelset conicity λ, wheel radius r0 and the lateral
distance between contact points 2l as

Λ = 2π( r0l / λ)1/ 2 (2.1)

Klingel’s formula shows that the frequency of the kinematic oscillation increases with speed. Any
further aspects of the dynamical behaviour of railway vehicles must be deduced from a consider-
ation of the forces acting, and this had to wait for Carter’s much later contribution to the subject.

FIGURE 2.1 The kinematic oscillation of a wheelset. (From Iwnicki, S. (Ed.), Handbook of Railway Vehicle
Dynamics, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2006. With permission.)
8 Handbook of Railway Vehicle Dynamics

2.3 CONCEPTS OF CURVING

The action of a wheelset with coned wheels in a curve was understood intuitively early in the
development of the railways. For example, in 1829, Ross Winans took out a patent that stressed the
importance of the axles taking up a radial position on curves [5], a fundamental objective of running
gear designers ever since, and W. B. Adams clearly understood the limitations of coning in curves
in 1863 [6]. Redtenbacher [7] provided the first theoretical analysis in 1855, which is illustrated in
Figure 2.2.
From the geometry in this figure, it can be seen that there is a simple geometric relationship
between the outwards movement of the wheel y, the radius of the curve R, the wheel radius r0, the
distance between the contact points 2l and the conicity λ of the wheels in order to sustain pure
rolling.
The application of Redtenbacher’s formula shows that a wheelset will only be able to move
outwards to achieve pure rolling if either the radius of curvature or the flangeway clearance is suf-
ficiently large. Otherwise, a realistic consideration of curving requires the analysis of the forces
acting between the vehicle and the track. In 1883, Mackenzie [8] gave the first essentially correct
description of curving in a seminal paper (which was subsequently translated and published in both
France and Germany). His work was suggested by an unintentional experiment in which the springs
of the driving wheels of a six-wheeled engine were tightened to increase the available adhesion.
The leading wheel mounted the rail when the locomotive approached a curve. Mackenzie gave
a numerical but non-mathematical treatment of the forces generated in curving. His discussion
is based on sliding friction and neglects coning, so that it is appropriate for sharp curves, where
flanges provide guidance. Referring to Figure 2.3, Mackenzie explains ‘If the flange were removed
from the outer wheel, the engine would run straight forwards, and this wheel, in making one revolu-
tion, would run from A to B; but it is compelled by the flange to move in the direction of the line
AC, a tangent to the curve at A, so that it slides sideways through a distance equal to BC. If this
wheel were loose on the axle, it would, in making a revolution, run along the rail to F; but the inner
wheel, in making a revolution, would run from H to K, the centre-line of the axle being KG; so that,
if both axles are keyed on the axle, either the outer wheel must slide forwards or the inner wheel
backwards. Assuming that the engine is exerting no tractive force, and that both wheels revolve at
the speed due to the inner wheel, then the outer wheel will slide forwards from F to G. Take AL
equal to BC, and LM equal to FG, the diagonal AM is the distance which the outer wheel slides in
making one revolution’.

FIGURE 2.2 Redtenbacher’s formula for the rolling of a coned wheelset on a curve. (From Iwnicki, S. (Ed.),
Handbook of Railway Vehicle Dynamics, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2006. With permission.)
Another random document with
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 V
A. D. 1492
COLUMBUS

COLUMBUS was blue-eyed, red-haired and tall, of a sunny honesty,

humane and panic-proof. In other words he came of the Baltic and
not of the Mediterranean stock, although his people lived in Italy and
he was born in the suburbs of Genoa. By caste he was a peasant,
and by trade, up to the age of twenty-eight, a weaver, except at
times when his Northern blood broke loose and drove him to sea for
a voyage. He made himself a scholar and a draftsman, and when at
last he escaped from an exacting family, he earned his living by
copying charts at Lisbon. A year later, as a navigating officer, he
found his way, via the wine trade, to Bristol. There he slouched
dreaming about the slums, dressed like a foreign monk. He must
needs pose to himself in some ideal character, and was bound to
dress the part. The artistic temperament is the mainspring of
adventure.
In our own day we may compare Boston, that grand old home of
the dying sailing ship, with New York, a bustling metropolis for the
steam liners. In the days of Columbus Genoa was an old-fashioned,
declining, but still splendid harbor of the oared galleys, while Lisbon
was the up-to-date metropolis of the new square-rigged sailing ships.
From these two greatest seaports of his age, Columbus came to
Bristol, the harbor of England, in the Middle Ages, of the slow,
scholarly, artistic, stately English. They were building that prayer in
stone, Saint Mary Redcliffe, a jewel of intricate red masonry, the
setting for Portuguese stained glass which glowed like precious
gems.
 “In the month of February,” says Columbus, “and in the year
1477, I navigated as far as the Island of Tile (Thule is Iceland) a
hundred leagues, and to this island which is as large as England, the
English, especially those of Bristol, go with merchandise. And at the
time that I was there the sea was not frozen over, although there
were very high tides.”
Here, then, is the record of Columbus himself that in his long
inquiry concerning the regions beyond the Atlantic, he actually visited
Iceland. A scholar himself, he was able to converse with the learned
Icelanders in Latin, the trade jargon of that age. From them he surely
must have known how one hundred thirty years ago the last timber
ship had come home from Nova Scotia, and twenty-nine years since,
within his own lifetime, the Greenland trade had closed. The maps of
the period showed the American coast as far south as the Carolines,
—the current geography book was equally clear:
“From Biameland (Siberia) the country stretches as far as the
desert regions in the north until Greenland begins. From Greenland
lies southerly Helluland (Labrador and Newfoundland), then
Markland (Nova Scotia); thence it is not far from Vinland (New
England), which some believe goes out from Africa. England and
Scotland are one island, yet each country is a kingdom by itself.
Ireland is a large island, Iceland is also a large island north of
Ireland.” Indeed Columbus seems almost to be quoting this from
memory when he says of Iceland, “this island, which is as large as
England.” I strongly suspect that Columbus when in Iceland, took a
solemn oath not to “discover” America.
The writers of books have spent four centuries in whitewashing,
retouching, dressing up and posing this figure of Columbus. The
navigator was indeed a man of powerful intellect and of noble
character, but they have made him seem a monumental prig as well
as an insufferable bore. He is the dead and helpless victim,
dehumanized by literary art until we feel that we really ought to pray
for him on All Prigs’ Day in the churches.
Columbus came home from his Icelandic and Guinea
expeditions with two perfectly sound ideas. “The world is a globe, so
if I sail westerly I shall find Japan and the Indies.” For fifteen bitter
years he became the laughing-stock of Europe.

Christopher Columbus

Now note how the historians, the biographers and the

commentators, the ponderous and the mawkish, the smug and the
pedantic alike all fail to see why their hero was laughed at. His name
was Cristo-fero Colombo, to us a good enough label for tying to any
man, but to the Italians and all educated persons of that age, a joke.
The words mean literally the Christ-Carrying Dove. Suppose a
modern man with some invention or a great idea, called himself Mr.
Christ-Carrying Dove, and tried to get capitalists in New York or
London to finance his enterprise! In the end he changed his name to
Cristoval Colon and got himself financed, but by that time his hair
was white, and his nerve was gone, and his health failing.
In the ninth century the vikings sailed from Norway by the great
circle course north of the gulf stream. They had no compass or any
instruments of navigation, and they braved the unknown currents,
the uncharted reefs, the unspeakable terrors of pack-ice, berg-
streams and fog on Greenland’s awful coast. They made no fuss.
But Columbus sailing in search of Japan, had one Englishman
and one Irishman, the rest of the people being a pack of dagoes. In
lovely weather they were ready to run away from their own shadows.
From here onward throughout the four voyages which disclosed
the West Indies and the Spanish Main, Columbus allowed his men to
shirk their duties, to disobey his orders, to mutiny, to desert and even
to make war upon him.
Between voyages he permitted everybody from the mean king
downward, to snub, swindle, plunder and defame himself and all who
were loyal to him in misfortune. Because Columbus behaved like an
old woman, his swindling pork contractor, Amerigo Vespucci, was
allowed to give his name to the Americas. Because he had not the
manhood to command, the hapless red Indians were outraged,
enslaved and driven to wholesale suicide, leaping in thousands from
the cliffs. For lack of a master the Spaniards performed such
prodigies of cowardice and cruelty as the world has never known
before or since, the native races were swept out of existence, and
Spain set out upon a downward path, a moral lapse beyond all
human power to arrest.
Yet looking back, how wonderful is the prophecy in that name,
Christ-Carrying Dove, borne by a saintly and heroic seaman whose
mission, in the end, added two continents to Christianity.
 This text mainly contradicts a Life of Columbus, by Clements
R. Markham, C. B. Phillip & Son, 1892.

Americus Vespuccius
 VI
A. D. 1519
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO

“HERNANDO CORTES spent an idle and unprofitable youth.”

So did I. And every other duffer is with me in being pleased with
Cortes for setting an example. We, not the good boys, need a little
encouragement.
He was seven years old when Columbus found the Indies. That
was a time when boys hurried to get grown up and join the search
for the Fountain of Youth, the trail to Eldorado. All who had time to
sleep dreamed tremendous dreams.
Cortes became a colonist in Cuba, a sore puzzle to the rascal in
command. When he clapped Cortes in irons the youngster slipped
free and defied him. When he gave Cortes command of an
expedition the fellow cheeked him. When he tried to arrest him the
bird had flown, and was declared an outlaw.
The soldiers and seamen of the expedition were horrified by this
adventurer who landed them in newly discovered Mexico, then sank
the ships lest they should wish to go home. They stood in the deadly
mists of the tropic plains, and far above them glowed the Star of the
Sea, white Orizaba crowned with polar snows. They marched up a
hill a mile and a half in sheer height through many zones of climate,
and every circumstance of pain and famine to the edge of a plateau
crowned by immense volcanoes, a land of plenty, densely peopled,
full of opulent cities. They found that this realm was ruled by an
emperor, famous for his victorious wars, able, it seemed, to place a
million warriors in the field, and hungry for captives to be first
sacrificed to the gods, and afterward eaten at the banquets of the
nobility and gentry. The temples were actually fed with twenty
thousand victims a year. The Spanish invading force of four hundred
men began to feel uncomfortable.
Yet if this Cortes puzzled the governor of Cuba, and horrified his
men, he paralyzed the Emperor Montezuma. Hundreds of years ago
a stranger had come to Mexico from the eastern sea, a bearded man
who taught the people the arts of civilized life. Then birds first sang
and flowers blossomed, the fields were fruitful and the sun shone in
glory upon that plateau of eternal spring. The hero, Bird-Serpent,
was remembered, loved and worshiped as a god. It was known to all
men that as he had gone down into the eastern sea so he would
return again in later ages. Now the prophecy was fulfilled. He had
come with his followers, all bearded white men out of the eastern
sea in mysterious winged vessels. Bird-Serpent and his people were
dressed in gleaming armor, had weapons that flashed lightning, were
mounted on terrible beasts—where steel and guns and horses were
unknown; and Montezuma felt as we should do if our land were
invaded by winged men riding dragons. To the supernatural visitors
the emperor sent embassy after embassy, loaded with treasure,
begging the hero not to approach his capital.
Set in the midst of Montezuma’s empire was the poor valiant
republic of Tlascala, at everlasting war with the Aztec nation.
Invading this republic Cortes was met by a horde of a hundred
thousand warriors, whom he thrashed in three engagements, and
when they were humbled, accepted as allies against the Aztecs.
Attended by an Tlascalan force he entered the ancient Aztec capital,
Cholula, famed for its temple. This is a stone-faced mound of rubble,
four times the size and half the height of the Great Pyramid, a forty-
acre building larger by four acres than any structure yet attempted by
white men.
By the emperor’s orders the Cholulans welcomed the Spaniards,
trapped them within their city, and attacked them. In reply, Cortes
used their temple as the scene of a public massacre, slaughtered
three thousand men, and having thus explained things, marched on
the City of Mexico.
 In those days a salt lake, since drained, filled the central hollow
of the vale of Mexico, and in the midst of it stood the city built on
piles, and threaded with canals, a barbaric Venice, larger, perhaps
even grander than Venice with its vast palace and gardens, and
numberless mound temples whose flaming altars lighted the town at
night. Three causeways crossed the lake and met just as they do to-
day at the central square. Here, on the site of the mound temple,
stands one of the greatest of the world’s cathedrals, and across the
square are public buildings marking the site of Montezuma’s palace,
and that in which he entertained the Spaniards. The white men were
astonished at the zoological gardens, the aviary, the floating market
gardens on the lake, the cleanliness of the streets, kept by a
thousand sweepers, and a metropolitan police which numbered ten
thousand men, arrangements far in advance of any city of Europe.
Then, as now, the place was a great and brilliant capital.
Yet from the Spanish point of view these Aztecs were only
barbarians to be conquered, and heathen cannibals doomed to hell
unless they accepted the faith. To them the Cholula massacre was
only a military precaution. They thought it right to seize their
generous host the emperor, to hold him as a prisoner under guard,
and one day even to put him in irons. For six months Montezuma
reigned under Spanish orders, overwhelmed with shame. He loved
his captors because they were gallant gentlemen, he freely gave
them his royal treasure of gems, and gold, and brilliant feather robes.
Over the plunder—a million and a half sterling in gold alone—they
squabbled; clear proof to Montezuma that they were not all divine.
Yet still they were friends, so he gave them all the spears and bows
from his arsenal as fuel to burn some of his nobles who had
affronted them.
It was at this time that the hostile governor of Cuba sent Narvaes
with seventeen ships and a strong force to arrest the conqueror for
rebellion. The odds were only three to one, instead of the usual
hundred to one against him, so Cortes went down to the coast, gave
Narvaes a thrashing, captured him, enrolled his men by way of
reinforcements, and returned with a force of eleven hundred troops.
 He had left his friend, Alvarado, with a hundred men to hold the
capital and guard the emperor. This Alvarado, so fair that the natives
called him Child of the Sun, was such a fool that he massacred six
hundred unarmed nobles and gentlefolk for being pagans, violated
the great temple, and so aroused the whole power of the fiercest
nation on earth to a war of vengeance. Barely in time to save
Alvarado, Cortes reentered the city to be besieged. Again and again
the Aztecs attempted to storm the palace. The emperor in his robes
of state addressed them from the ramparts, and they shot him. They
seized the great temple which overlooked the palace, and this the
Spaniards stormed. In face of awful losses day by day the
Spaniards, starving and desperate, cleared a road through the city,
and on the night of Montezuma’s death they attempted to retreat by
one of the causeways leading to the mainland. Three canals cut this
road, and the drawbridges had been taken away, but Cortes brought
a portable bridge to span them. They crossed the first as the gigantic
sobbing gong upon the heights of the temple aroused the entire city.
Heavily beset from the rear, and by thousands of men in canoes,
they found that the weight of their transport had jammed the bridge
which could not be removed. They filled the second gap with rocks,
with their artillery and transport, with chests of gold, horses, and
dead men. So they came to the third gap, no longer an army but as a
flying mob of Spaniards and Tlascalan warriors bewildered in the
rain and the darkness by the headlong desperation of the attacking
host. They were compelled to swim, and at least fifty of the recruits
were drowned by the weight of gold they refused to leave, while
many were captured to be sacrificed upon the Aztec altars.
Montezuma’s children were drowned, and hundreds more, while
Cortes and his cavaliers, swimming their horses back and forth
convoyed the column, and Alvarado with his rear guard held the
causeway.
Last in the retreat, grounding his spear butt, he leaped the
chasm, a feat of daring which has given a name forever to this place
as Alvarado’s Leap. And just beyond, upon the mainland there is an
ancient tree beneath which Cortes, as the dawn broke out, sat on the
ground and cried. He had lost four hundred fifty Spaniards, and
thousands of Tlascalans, his records, artillery, muskets, stores and
treasure in that lost battle of the Dreadful Night.
A week later the starved and wounded force was beset by an
army of two hundred thousand Aztecs. They had only their swords
now, but, after long hours of fighting, Cortes himself killed the Aztec
general, so by his matchless valor and leadership gaining a victory.
The rest is a tale of horror beyond telling, for, rested and
reinforced, the Spaniards went back. They invested, besieged,
stormed and burned the famine-stricken, pestilence-ridden capital, a
city choked and heaped with the unburied dead of a most valiant
nation.
Afterward, under the Spanish viceroys, Mexico was extended
and enlarged to the edge of Alaska, a Christian civilized state
renowned for mighty works of engineering, the splendor of her
architecture, and for such inventions as the national pawn-shop, as a
bank to help the poor. One of the so-called native “slaves” of the
mines once wrote to the king of Spain, begging his majesty to visit
Mexico and offering to make a royal road for him, paving the two
hundred fifty miles from Vera Cruz to the capital with ingots of pure
silver as a gift to Spain.
 VII
A. D. 1532
THE CONQUEST OF PERU

PIZARRO was reared for a swineherd; long years of soldiering

made him no more than a captain, and when at the age of fifty he
turned explorer, he discovered nothing but failure.
For seven years he and his followers suffered on trails beset by
snakes and alligators, in feverish jungles haunted by man-eating
savages, to be thrown at last battered, ragged and starving on the
Isle of Hell. Then a ship offered them passage, but old Pizarro drew
a line in the dust with his sword. “Friends,” said he, “and comrades,
on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm,
desertion and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru
with its riches; here Panama and its poverty. Choose each man,
what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.”
Thirteen of all his people crossed the line with Pizarro, the rest
deserting him, and he was seven months marooned on his desert
isle in the Pacific. When the explorer’s partners at last were able to
send a ship from Panama, it brought him orders to return, a failure.
He did not return but took the ship to the southward, his guide the
great white Andes, along a coast no longer of horrible swamps but
now more populous, more civilized than Spain, by hundreds of miles
on end of well-tilled farms, fair villages and rich cities where the
temples were sheathed with plates of pure red gold. As in the Mexico
of eight years ago, the Spaniards were welcomed as superhuman,
their ship, their battered armor and their muskets accounted as
possessions of strayed gods. They dined in the palaces of courtly
nobles, rested in gardens curiously enriched with foliage and flowers
of beaten gold and silver, and found native gentlemen eager to join
them in their ship as guests. So with a shipload of wonders to
illustrate this discovery they went back to Panama, and Pizarro
returned home to seek in Spain the help of Charles V. There, at the
emperor’s court, he met Cortes, who came to lay the wealth of
conquered Mexico at his sovereign’s feet, and Charles, with a lively
sense of more to come, despatched Pizarro to overthrow Peru.
Between the Eastern and the Western Andes lies a series of lofty
plains and valleys, in those days irrigated and farmed by an
immense civilized population. A highway, in length 1,100 miles,
threaded the settlements together. The whole empire was ruled by a
foreign dynasty, called the Incas, a race of fighting despots by whom
the people had been more or less enslaved. The last Inca had left
the northern kingdom of Quito to his younger son, the ferocious
Atahuallpa, and the southern realm of Cuzco to his heir, the gentle
Huascar.
These brothers fought until Atahuallpa subdued the southern
kingdom, imprisoned Huascar, and reigned so far as he knew over
the whole world. It was then that from outside the world came one
hundred sixty-eight men of an unknown race possessed of ships,
horses, armor and muskets—things very marvelous, and useful to
have. The emperor invited these strangers to cross the Andes,
intending, when they came, to take such blessings as the Sun might
send him. The city of Caxamalca was cleared of its people, and the
buildings enclosing the market place were furnished for the reception
of the Spaniards.
The emperor’s main army was seven hundred miles to the
southward, but the white men were appalled by the enormous host
attending him in his camp, where he had halted to bathe at the hot
springs, three miles from their new quarters. The Peruvian watch
fires on the mountain sides were as thick as the stars of heaven.
The sun was setting next day when a procession entered the
Plaza of Caxamalca, a retinue of six thousand guards, nobles,
courtiers, dignitaries, surrounding the litter on which was placed the
gently swaying golden throne of the young emperor.
 Of all the Spaniards, only one came forward, a priest who,
through an interpreter, preached, explaining from the
commencement of the world the story of his faith, Saint Peter’s
sovereignty, the papal office, and Pizarro’s mission to receive the
homage of this barbarian. The emperor listened, amused at first,
then bored, at last affronted, throwing down the book he was asked
to kiss. On that a scarf waved and the Spaniards swept from their
ambush, blocking the exits, charging as a wolf-pack on a sheepfold,
riding the people down while they slaughtered. So great was the
pressure that a wall of the courtyard fell, releasing thousands whose
panic flight stampeded the Incas’ army. But the nobles had rallied
about their sovereign, unarmed but with desperate valor clinging to
the legs of the horses and breaking the charge of cavalry. They
threw themselves in the way of the fusillades, their bodies piled in
mounds, their blood flooding the pavement. Then, as the bearers fell,
the golden throne was overturned, and the emperor hurried away a
prisoner. Two thousand people had perished in the attempt to save
him.
The history of the Mexican conquest was repeated here, and
once more a captive emperor reigned under Spanish dictation.
This Atahuallpa was made of sterner stuff than Montezuma, and
had his defeated brother Huascar drowned, lest the Spaniards
should make use of his rival claim to the throne. The Peruvian prince
had no illusions as to the divinity of the white men, saw clearly that
their real religion was the adoration of gold, and in contempt offered
a bribe for his freedom. Reaching the full extent of his arm to a
height of nine feet, he boasted that to that level he would fill the
throne room with gold as the price of his liberty, and twice he would
fill the anteroom with silver. So he sent orders to every city of his
empire commanding that the shrines, the temples, palaces and
gardens be stripped of their gold and silver ornaments, save only the
bodies of the dead kings, his fathers. Of course, the priests made
haste to bury their treasures, but the Spaniards went to see the
plunder collected and when they had finished no treasures were left
in sight save a course of solid golden ingots in the walls of the
Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and certain massive beams of silver too
heavy for shipment. Still the plunder of an empire failed to reach the
nine-foot line on the walls of the throne room at Caxamalca, but the
soldiers were tired of waiting, especially when the goldsmiths took a
month to melt the gold into ingots. So the royal fifth was shipped to
the king of Spain, Pizarro’s share was set apart, a tithe was
dedicated to the Church, and the remainder divided among the
soldiers according to their rank, in all three and a half millions
sterling by modern measurement, the greatest king’s ransom known
to history. Then the emperor was tried by a mock court-martial,
sentenced to death and murdered. It is comforting to note that of all
who took part in that infamy not one escaped an early and a violent
death.
Pizarro had been in a business partnership with the
schoolmaster Luque of Panama cathedral, and with Almagro, a little
fat, one-eyed adventurer, who now arrived on the scene with
reinforcements. Pizarro’s brothers also came from Spain. So when
the emperor’s death lashed the Peruvians to desperation, there were
Spaniards enough to face odds of a hundred to one in a long series
of battles, ending with the siege of the adventurers who held Cuzco
against the Inca Manco for five months. The city, vast in extent, was
thatched, and burned for seven days with the Spaniards in the midst.
They fought in sheer despair, and the Indians with heroism, their
best weapon the lasso, their main hope that of starving the garrison
to death. No valor could possibly save these heroic robbers, shut off
from escape or from rescue by the impenetrable rampart of the
Andes. They owed their salvation to the fact that the Indians must
disperse to reap their crops lest the entire nation perish of hunger,
and the last of the Incas ended his life a fugitive lost in the recesses
of the mountains.
Then came a civil war between the Pizarros, and Almagro,
whose share of the plunder turned out to be a snowy desolation to
the southward. It was not until after this squalid feud had been ended
by Almagro’s execution and Pizarro’s murder, that the desolate
snows were uncovered, revealing the incomparable treasures of
silver Potosi, Spain’s share of the plunder.
 VIII
A. D. 1534
THE CORSAIRS

IN 1453 Constantinople was besieged and stormed by the Turks, the

Christian emperor fell with sixty thousand of his men in battle, and
the Caliph Mahomet II raised the standard of Islam over the last
ruins of the Roman empire.
Four years later a sailorman, a Christian from the Balkan States,
turned Moslem and was banished from the city. He married a
Christian widow in Mitylene and raised two sons to his trade. At a
very tender age, Uruj, the elder son, went into business as a pirate,
and on his maiden cruise was chased and captured by a galley of
the Knights of Saint John who threw him into the hold to be a slave
at the oars. That night a slave upon the nearest oar-bench disturbed
the crew by groaning, and to keep him quiet was thrown overboard.
Not liking his situation or prospects, Uruj slipped his shackles, crept
out and swam ashore. On his next voyage, being still extremely
young, he was captured and swam ashore again. Then the sultan’s
brother fitted him out as a corsair at the cost of five thousand ducats,
to be paid by the basha of Egypt, and so, thanks to this act of
princely generosity, Uruj was able to open a general practise. His
young brother Khizr, also a pirate, joined him; the firm was protected
by the sultan of Tunis who got a commission of twenty per cent. on
the loot; and being steady, industrious and thrifty, by strict application
to business, they made a reputation throughout the Middle Sea.
Indeed the Grand Turk bestowed upon Khizr the title “Protector of
Religion,” a distinction never granted before or since to any
professional robber. Once after a bitter hard fight the brothers
captured a first-rate ship of war, The Galley of Naples, and six lady
passengers besides three hundred men were marched ashore into
slavery. “See,” said the sultan of Tunis, “how Heaven recompenses
the brave!” Uruj, by the way, was laid up some months for repairs,
and in his next engagement, a silly attack on a fortress, happened to
lose an arm as part of his recompense.
By this time the brothers were weary of that twenty per cent.
commission to the unctuous sultan of Tunis, and by way of cheating
him, took to besieging fortresses, or sacking towns, Christian or
Moslem as the case might be, until they had base camps of their
own, Uruj as king of Tlemcen, and Khizr as king of Algiers. Then Uruj
fell in battle, and Khizr Barbarossa began to do business as a
wholesale pirate with a branch kingdom of Tunis, and fleets to
destroy all commerce, to wreck and burn settlements of the Christian
powers until he had command of the sea as a first-class nuisance.
The gentle Moors, most civilized of peoples, expelled from Spain
(1493) by the callous ill-faith of Ferdinand and Isabella, and stranded
upon North Africa to starve, manned Barbarossa’s fleets for a bloody
vengeance upon Christian Europe. Then Charles V brought the
strength of Spain, Germany and Italy to bear in an expedition against
Barbarossa, but his fleet was wrecked by a storm, clear proof that
Allah had taken sides with the strong pirate king. Barbarossa then
despatched his lieutenant Hassan to ravage the coast of Valencia.
It was upon this venture that Hassan met a transport
merchantman with a hundred veteran Spanish infantry, too strong to
attack; so when this lieutenant returned to Algiers deep-laden with
spoil and captives from his raid, he found King Barbarossa far from
pleased. The prisoners were butchered, and Hassan was flogged in
public for having shirked an engagement. That is why Hassan joined
with Venalcadi, a brother officer who was also in disgrace, and
together they drove Barbarossa out of Algeria. Presently the king
came back with a whole fleet of his fellow corsairs, brother
craftsmen, the Jew, and Hunt-the-Devil, Salærrez and Tabas, all
moved to grief and rage by the tears of a sorely ill-treated hero. With
the aid of sixty captive Spanish soldiers, who won their freedom,
they captured Algiers, wiped out the mutineers, and restored the
most perfect harmony. Indeed, by way of proof that there really was
no trouble among the corsairs, King Barbarossa sent off Hunt-the-
Devil with seventeen ships to burn Spain. Ever in blood and tears,
their homes in flames, their women ravished, their very children
enslaved, the Spaniards had to pay for breaking faith with the Moors
of Granada.
Barbarossa was not yet altogether king of Algiers. For twenty
years the Peñon, a fortress fronting that city, had been held by
Martin de Vargas and his garrison. Worn out with disease and famine
these Spaniards now fought Barbarossa to the last breath, but their
walls went down in ruin, the breach was stormed, and all were put to
the sword. De Vargas, taken prisoner, demanded the death of a
Spaniard who had betrayed him. The traitor was promptly beheaded,
but Barbarossa turned upon De Vargas. “You and yours,” he said,
“have caused me too much trouble,” and he again signed to the
headsman. So De Vargas fell.
Terrible was the rage of Charles V, emperor of half Europe, thus
defied and insulted by the atrocious corsair. It was then that he
engaged the services of Andrea Doria, the greatest Christian admiral
of that age, for war against Barbarossa. And at the same time the
commander of the faithful, Suleiman the Magnificent, sent for King
Barbarossa to command the Turkish fleet.
He came, with gifts for the calif: two hundred women bearing
presents of gold or silver; one hundred camels laden with silks and
gold; then lions and other strange beasts; and more loads of
brocades, or rich garments, all in procession through Constantinople,
preceding the pirate king on his road to the palace. The sultan gave
him not only a big fleet, but also vice-regal powers to make war or
peace. Next summer (1534) eleven thousand Christian slaves, and a
long procession of ships loaded with the plunder of smoking Italy
were sent to the Golden Horn. Incidentally, Barbarossa seized the
kingdom of Tunis for himself, and slaughtered three thousand of the
faithful, just to encourage the rest.
It was to avenge the banished King Hassan, and these poor
slaughtered citizens that the Emperor Charles V, attended by his
admiral, Andrea Doria, came with an army and a mighty fleet to
Tunis.
He drove out Barbarossa, a penniless, discredited fugitive; and
his soldiers slaughtered thirty thousand citizens of Tunis to console
them for the pirate’s late atrocities.
Poor old Barbarossa, past seventy years of age, had lost a
horde of fifty thousand men, his kingdom of Tunis, fleet and arsenal;
but he still had fifteen galleys left at Bona, his kingdom of Algiers to
fall back upon, and his Moorish seamen, who had no trade to win
them honest bread except as pirates. “Cheer up,” said he, to these
broken starving men, and after a little holiday they sacked the
Balearic Isles taking five thousand, seven hundred slaves, and any
amount of shipping. Then came the building of a Turkish fleet; and
with one hundred twenty sail, Barbarossa went to his last culminating
triumph, the defeat of Andrea Doria, who had at Prevesa one
hundred ninety-five ships, sixty thousand men, and two thousand,
five hundred ninety-four guns. With that victory he retired, and after
eight years of peace, he died in his bed, full of years and honors. For
centuries to come all Turkish ships saluted with their guns, and
dipped their colors whenever they passed the grave of the King of
the Sea.

Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean, Commander E. Hamilton

Currey, R.N. John Murray.
 IX
A. D. 1542
PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES

IT was Italian trade that bought and paid for the designs of Raphael,
the temples of Michelangelo, the sculptures of Cellini, the inventions
of Da Vinci, for all the wonders, the glories, the splendors of inspired
Italy. And it was not good for the Italian trade that Barbarossa, and
the corsairs of three centuries in his wake, beggared the merchants
and enslaved their seamen. But Italian commerce had its source in
the Indian Seas, and the ruin of Italy began when the sea adventures
of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope to rob, to trade, to
govern and convert at the old centers of Arabian business.
Poverty is the mother of labor, labor the parent of wealth and
genius. It is the poverty of Attica, and the Roman swamps, of sterile
Scotland, boggy Ireland, swampy Holland, stony New England,
which drove them to high endeavor and great reward. Portugal, too,
had that advantage of being small and poor, without resources, or
any motive to keep the folk at home. So the fishermen took to trading
and exploration led by Cao who found the Cape of Good Hope,
Vasco da Gama who smelt out the way to India, Almeida who gained
command of the Indian Seas, Cabral who discovered Brazil,
Albuquerque who, seizing Goa and Malacca, established a Christian
empire in the Indies, and Magellan, who showed Spain the way to
the Pacific.
Of these the typical man was Da Gama, a noble with the motives
of a crusader and the habits of a pirate, who once set fire to a
shipload of Arab pilgrims, and watched unmoved while the women
on her blazing deck held out little babies in the vain hope of mercy.
On his first voyage he came to Calicut, a center of Hindu civilization,
a seat of Arab commerce, and to the rajah sent a present of washing
basins, casks of oil, a few strings of coral, fit illustration of the
poverty of his brave country, accepted as a joke in polished, wealthy,
weary India. The king gave him leave to trade, but seized the poor
trade goods until the Portuguese ships had been ransacked for two
hundred twenty-three pounds in gold to pay the customs duties. The
point of the joke was only realized when on his second voyage Da
Gama came with a fleet, bombarded Calicut, and loaded his ships
with spices, leaving a trail of blood and ashes along the Indian coast.
Twenty years later he came a third time, but now as viceroy to the
Portuguese Indies. Portugal was no longer poor, but the richest state
in Europe, bleeding herself to death to find the men for her ventures.
Now these arrogant and ferocious officials, military robbers,
fishermen turned corsairs, and ravenous traders taught the whole
East to hate and fear the Christ. And then came a tiny little monk no
more than five feet high, a white-haired, blue-eyed mendicant, who
begged the rice he lived on. Yet so sweet was his temper, so magical
the charm, so supernatural the valor of this barefoot monk that the
children worshiped him, the lepers came to him to be healed, and
the pirates were proud to have him as their guest. He was a
gentleman, a Spanish Basque, by name Francis de Xavier, and in
the University of Paris had been a fellow student with the reformer
Calvin, then a friend and follower of Ignatius de Loyola, helping him
to found the Society of Jesus. Xavier came to the Indies in 1542 as a
Jesuit priest.
Once on a sea voyage Xavier stood for some time watching a
soldier at cards, who gambled away all his money and then a large
sum which had been entrusted to his care. When the soldier was in
tears and threatening suicide, Xavier borrowed for him the sum of
one shilling twopence, shuffled and dealt for him, and watched him
win back all that he had lost. At that point Saint Francis set to work to
save the soldier’s soul, but this disreputable story is not shown in the
official record of his miracles.
From his own letters one sees how the heathen puzzled this little
saint, “‘Was God black or white?’ For as there is so great variety of