A De Dion Bouton treat from South Africa

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This interesting story starts with James Sidney Drewry, who was born in London in November 1882 to a father who was a ship engineer, an inventor who advertised a patent in 1891 for a ‘sprung bicycle wheel’, and subsequently managed a bicycle manufacturing business in Herne Hill, in south London. His grandfather was both a barrister and a respected civil engineer who wrote a book called A Memoir on Suspension Bridges.

Junior engineer and improver

Following an apprenticeship at Drewry & Sons, James found employment with De Dion Bouton as a ‘junior engineer and improver’. Between 1902 and 1906, he worked in South Africa on the Cape to Cairo railway project. This was one of the most ambitious schemes ever conceived during the heyday of colonial expansion in Africa, with Cecil Rhodes as its driving force, and with the overall ambition of connecting all the adjacent possessions of the British Empire through a continuous railway and telegraph line covering 6,500 miles. It was destined never to be finished.

De Dion Bouton quadricycle

One of the projects that Drewry worked on was the construction of a rail trolley. Two photographs of the trolley are presented here; they feature in James Drewry’s diaries, completed during his stay in South Africa. It is clearly derived from a De Dion Bouton quadricycle, which James would have been familiar with during the time when he worked for the company. The vehicle differs considerably in detail from the standard machine. There is nothing about the frame in terms of the side rails, front forks, or the bridge axle, that are typical of the De Dion Bouton quadricycle. The full frame tank was introduced by De Dion Bouton in spring 1902 (and by Ariel two years previously) and yet the full frame tank in the photograph is a different concoction, although it does have the De Dion Bouton badge and it may well have started life as a standard item, but its capacity has been significantly expanded.

The drive shafts and overall width of the machine are markedly different from the usual quadricycle, but then the machine would have had to fit the standard rail gauge of 1.435m. The engine is a water-cooled unit without the usual finned cylinder block. It looks to be a 3.5hp water-cooled engine that was introduced in June 1899 for the voiturette. This engine was never installed into a road-going tricycle or quadricycle.

Railcars

The construction of railcars became something of an obsession for Drewry because, upon his return home, he designed and manufactured the Drewry petrol-driven railcar that was made by his company in Herne Hill. The railcars were exported to South America, South Africa, India, Australia and Hawaii. The company he established for the purpose was ultimately sold to B.S.A. of Birmingham.

The manufacture of railcars, following on from the dramatic expansion of the rail network in all parts of the globe outside of Europe during the first three decades of the twentieth century, increased very significantly, and there were numerous experiments involving the conversion of road cars to rail vehicles. As an example, the facilities of the De Dion Bouton factory at Puteaux, following the near cessation of motor car production in the early 1930s, were used for the manufacture of railcars.

Drewry’s career was not entirely dedicated to railcars, for he developed pontoon bridges for the Belgian army in the First World War. With the arrival of the Second World War, he was involved in the construction of tank trailers and a secret project named the ‘Welfreighter’, a mini submarine.  Google 'James Sidney Drewry 1882-1952' for more details on this fascinating individual.

Text was originally published by the De Dion Bouton Club UK.

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