Talk:Draisine

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The draisine is named after the inventor Baron Drais zu Sauerbron from germany. The name refers to the hand operated railroad handcar.(invented around 1830)

Drais also invented the bicycle without chain. (In UK they were called hobbyhorse), He had the first patent on this in 1817. He called his machine however 'Velocipede'. In the second part of the 19th century, people began to refer to it as Draisine.

[edit] Merger with Handcar?

I'm not convinced that a merge would be a good idea here. Admittedly, both the handcar and the draisine are light, non-revenue rolling stock, but the draisine seems to be powered by feet turning a gear mechanism, and the handcar by hands providing an up-and-down motion; the mechanical aspects of the two are different. Placing "Handcar" under "Draisine" would thus be misleading, as would placing "Draisine" under "Handcar". I could see both articles turned into separate subsections of a third article that might deal with MOW or lightweight railcars as a whole, but not combining the two articles under draisine or handcar. So, my vote is "no". --Badger151 05:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Right. "Draisine" unfortunately is used for a variety of things, all of them more or less rare, while "Handcar" is used for one thing, which was once commonplace. One could perhaps cook up more justification for adding "handcar" into the list of things a "drasine" can be than vice versa, but there's no need. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)