Everything about Decauville totally explained
Paul
Decauville (1846-1922) was a
French pioneer in light railways. His major innovation was the use of
ready-made sections of light,
narrow gauge track fastened to steel
sleepers; this track was portable and could be disassembled and transported very easily. The first Decauville railway used
gauge; Decauville later refined his invention and switched to and gauge.
Starting in 1875, his company produced track elements, engines and cars. Those were exported to many countries, in particular to the
colonial possessions of European powers. The French
military became interested in the Decauville system as soon as 1888 and chose the gauge track to equip its
strongholds and to carry
artillery pieces and
ammunition during military campaigns. Decauville track was used during the French military expeditions to
Madagascar and
Morocco.
By the
First World War, Decauville had become a military standard and the French and
British eventually built thousands of miles of track. The
German had a similar system, with normalized engines.
Decauville
railways were widely used in construction yards, quarries, farms, cane fields and mountain railways up to the 1950s. The company also produced road vehicles and construction engines.
Decauville tram installations for
henequen plantations in the
Mexican region of the
Yucatan, were so extensive (approximately 4,500 kilometers of track), that the system became the
de facto mass transit system for the region. Some ex-
haciendas of the area still have small operating (usually
burro powered) Decauville systems.
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