GB515778A - A tram-road system for road vehicles and road trains - Google Patents

Abstract

515,778. Steering vehicles. CIOCCA, G. Aug. 5, 1938, No. 23184. Convention date, Feb. 22. Addition to 499,694. [Class 79 (v)] In a tram-road system for road vehicles of the parent Specification, wherein a roadway is formed with a central raised guideway the sides of which are engaged by tracking rollers, carried by elastically constrained lever arms on the vehicles, a vehicle is employed having at each end thereof steerable road wheels associated with tracking members, the tracking gears at the two ends of the vehicle being independent of each other. The arrangement may be that, with a four-wheeled vehicle, though all the wheels are steerable, means are provided to render the rear pair of wheels according to the direction of travel, for the time being, non - steerable. Such an arrangement is shown in Fig. 1, wherein at each end of the vehicle, tracking rollers 3 are carried by levers 4 pivoted on the axle 5 and connected by' transverse bars 8, 9, so as to form an articulated parallelogram, one bar 9 being detachably connected to the track rod 6 of the usual steering linkage whilst the other bar 8 is resiliently constrained by a centralising device 44 tending' to keep the steering straight. On the levers 4, arms 31 project inwardly towards the longitudinal centre line of the vehicle and adjustable stops 32 are arranged so that when brought into engagement with either pair of arms 31, the tracking levers 4 together with the steering means at that end of the vehicle are rendered immobile. For this purpose, as shown in Fig. 2, each stop 32 is carried on a screwed shaft 33 rotatably mounted in a bearing 34 attached to the underside of the axle 5 and adapted to be rotated through a telescopic shaft 35 with universal joints 46 by a handwheel 36 on the end of the vehicle. The two screwed shafts 33 are connected by a shaft 38 so that concurrent adjustments may be effected from either end of the vehicle. In the case of vehicles with three or more pairs of wheels the steerability of the front and rear pairs of wheels may be retained and in a construction of this nature, (Fig. 3, not shown) levers 4 connected by transverse bars 8, 9 are provided on each end axle as in the form shown in Fig. 1, but with tracking rollers 3 at each end of each lever 4, equidistantly from the axle. The centralizing device 44 is the same as that described in Specification 515,654.