Jouef - Decauville Balladeuse Coach - Prototype

[Stephen Rainsbury]

Does anybody have information or photographs about the prototype that this model was based on please?



Thanks
Stephen

[Terry Mowles]

Is this of any help? http://www.merionethrailwaysociety.com/decauville-type-ke-trailers.html

[B.Meldon]

 There was more than one version of the 60cm gauge Deauville coach.
There was also a smaller 50cm gauge version.

The Jouef model is a compromise in terms of both scale and design.

In general it is 00 (4mm to the foot) scale in terms of width and height, but it is one compartment too short.
Even the original Jouef box illustrations show a coach with an extra compartment!

There was a brass kit available that was the correct length and had the right compartments. These were available in both H0 (3.5mm) scale and 00 (4mm) scale. The H0 scale one was smaller in height and width, the 00 scale one was longer. Both had one extra compartment.

[B.Meldon]

The drawing in the link in Terry's post above is taken from page 481 in 'The Engineer' dated 3rd May 1989.
It is of only one version that was at the 1889 Paris Exhibition.
This drawing was in turn copied from the exhibition guide!
There were other versions of the coach that had different dimensions.

[Russell Jackson]

The Minitrains 'toast rack' coaches have four compartments and a different configuration. (For example, as pictured on the Dundas web site). Are these also charming but effectively 'freelance' approximations, or was there a corresponding  authentic variant?
By the way, 'balader' – with one 'l' – is translated in the Collins/Robert dictionary as to go for a walk or a ride, implying an outing rather than a journey with a definite destination. (And 'les mains baladeuses' are 'wandering hands'!) It's odd that Jouef should have spelt it with two 'l's.

Russell Jackson

[Russell Jackson]

I suppose these could be supplied in accordance with the railway company's specifications.
The narrow-gauge museum website, https://www.decauville.nl, has an impressive advertisement, which shows a train with one of these crossing a precarious viaduct above mineral workings where other rolling stock is at work while a site manager looks on.
 The guard of the passenger train is standing on the foot-board of the carriage, in defiance of any modern rules of health and safety but not uncommon at the time. The well-dressed passengers are crammed in to what, as a translation of 'balardeuse', we should perhaps call the 'tourist' coach.
Russell

[Keith Lawrence]

"Balladeuse" is actually a "Ballad singer"

"Baladeuse" on the other hand is merely a "trailer"

Why they spelt it with 2 Ls is anybodies guess??


Keith

[Russell Jackson]

Thanks, Keith. It is indeed anybody's guess.

I'm not sure about 'trailer', as 'trail' only comes up in the large Collins/Robert bilingual dictionary in the sense of trailing, strolling or simply wandering around - a 'baladeur' being someone doing just that (A 'baladin' is a wandering entertainer, and it doesn't include 'balladeuse' or any male equivalent.) A friend in Paris, who has translated a lot of novels from the English, is also puzzled and wonders whether Jouef was trying to make some sort of weak pun with those two Ls. She knows 'baladeuse' only as the short version of 'lampe baladeuse' – a lamp you can carry round. Perhaps the  meaning is that the coach is for excursions.
And I suppose that's self-evident in any case. It's the railway equivalent of those motorised or horse-drawn chars-a-banc (with an acute on the middle 'a') used for outings.


But on another, more important point, I was intrigued to find that one of the web sites cited by Wikipedia has a catalogue of the firms' products in English, with interesting photos. One shows workers at the Decauville factory posing on the frame of a long version of one of these vehicles, with its seat partitions and roof. Another illustration is a drawing of a fancy two-axle version that looks more like a car on a fairground ride than anything you'd want to wander anywhere in. The whole catalogue, with the range of trucks and locos and sectional track, is very like a model manufacturer's catalogue. Perhaps someone should model part of the firm's factory as a micro-module?

Russell

[Ian McAulay]

The French for trailer is remorque. That's used both for the kind you can hitch behind a car and for an unpowered trailer vehicle in a multiple unit.

Balader (one L) is a verb with a fairly broad range of meanings to do with wandering around. It can be used for a trip or jaunt out in the car or for carrying something around or figuratively for giving someone the run-around.

As noted by Russell above, baladeuse is an adjective with the carrying around or portable sense. As a noun, it really only means portable lamp. It retains the feminine form of the adjective because lampe in French is also feminine. (An inspection lamp for looking under a vehicle is a baladeuse.)

Baladeur (masculine form) is also from the sense of portability. It's a shortening of lecteur baladeur for a portable music player (a Walkman for instance).

I suspect the Decauville product may have started out as voiture baladeuse (voiture for carriage is feminine) carrying the sense of going out for a trip or a jaunt, again as Russell suggests. I think the double L is probably no more than a typo that made it onto the Jouef/Playcraft packaging.

Hope that's not veering too wildly off topic!

Ian

[Russell Jackson]

Thanks, Ian. I think I'm responsible for pushing us to wander (balader) further off-topic, but we have sharpened up our French vocabulary, and 'voiture baladeuse' makes a lot of sense.
Now back to the modelling!
Russell