The Auto-Railer - UPDATED

It's rare for me to even mention anything with an internal combustion engine in relationship with PNAERC, but on occasion, something pops up that's cool enough that even I can't manage to find it uninteresting. And so, courtesy of some timely photos and information from our friend Bill Wall, I present the Evans Auto-Railer.

Back in the 1930s, there was a small market for rail buses, with many of the examples built going to traction lines to either replace or feed into electric railway operations (see the Grafton rail bus and the slightly later Houston-North Shore rail bus, both preserved at the National Museum of Transportation). Around 1935, a company called Evans started building modern, streamlined rail buses patterned after the city buses of the day. These weren't normal rail buses, though, because they had both rubber tires and railroad wheels - think Hy-Railer - and could operate both on and off the tracks. Evans called them Auto-Railers, and only one has survived to the present day.

Pictured here, it has just been acquired by the National Capital Trolley Museum. That's a good home for it because it came from the Arlington & Fairfax in Virginia, an electric line that had just taken down its wires. It was built in 1936 and only ran on the A&F until 1939, which is when that line was abandoned. This example was sold to the Arcade & Attica in western New York, where it resided until it went to Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire in the late 1950s. It has been there ever since. Other examples went to interurban lines including the Washington & Old Dominion and the Chicago South Shore & South Bend.*

So, congratulations to NCTM on saving this quite distinctive piece of history. The Auto-Railer wasn't very successful; I think the A&F, with its 13 examples, was by far the largest operator. These can't have been terribly popular with riders accustomed to large, heavy streetcars. Incredibly, the seating capacity appears to have been 27 people, which sounds horrifying given that the thing doesn't appear that much larger than a Chevy Suburban.

*Intriguingly, although historic records claim that A&F 109 went to the South Shore, that number is clearly evident on the example shown here that's going to NCTM. So, which Auto-Railer went to the South Shore?

UPDATE: Bill Wall kindly provided an additional photo of the front of the Auto-Railer that clearly shows the number, even though most of the paint has worn away: 109. The number is located over the front headlight in the same location and typeface used by the Arlington & Fairfax, so I would presume that this was, indeed, A&F 109. 

This was definitely not the Auto-Railer that ended up on the South Shore. Bill reports that the example now at NCTM has a complete interior and ceiling, plus it clearly lacks add-ons the CSS&SB one acquired such as square headlight surrounds and some rooftop accoutrements. Ideally, it would be nice to find South Shore Line records showing the previous fleet number of the Auto-Railer they received and rebuilt as an overhead line truck; barring that, it may be difficult to figure out what that thing's A&F number had been, since it's now known that it wasn't A&F 109.

UPDATE #2: More information from Bill Wall comes in the form of this 1962 photo of Auto-Railer 109, purportedly taken at the White Mountain Central (Clark's Trading Post, I presume) and labeled "Grasse River." The photo is from this page.

This thing was clearly in rough shape even 60 years ago! The Grasse River Railroad was an unusual short line railroad in upstate New York which was also home to the distinctive wooden doodlebug now preserved in operational condition at the Strasburg Railroad. This thing appears to have gone from the A&F to the GRR, possibly via the Arcade & Attica. How much use it saw, if any, on the GRR is unknown. Note that when this photo was taken, the South Shore was still using their Auto-Railer as a line car!

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

The Western Railway Museum is acquiring three Bay Area Rapid Transit cars from the system's just-retired "legacy" fleet, and the second of these three cars arrived yesterday. BART 1834 has a pretty interesting history. It's a "B2" class car, and the "B" indicates that it's a blind motor (aka, no cab) while the "2" indicates that it was rebuilt around 2000 with IGBT inverter control and AC motors. However, that was its second rebuilding - when it was new, it was "A" car 120 and was the same type as BART 1164 (then numbered 164), already preserved at WRM. It was rebuilt without its cab sometime around 1980, I think. The car's most unique claim to fame, though, is that in September 1972, it was ridden by President Richard Nixon. So, there you go.

The above photo of car 1834 leaving San Francisco comes from a post on WRM's Facebook page, and it appears that the car has now been placed on display indoors at the museum, coupled to car 1164. It's been added to the PNAERC list but I'm still looking for more information, primarily rebuild dates - both for when it went from an A car to a B car and for when it went from a B to a B2 car.

I believe car 1834 is only the second blind motor on the PNAERC list, after PATH 143, and the first to be preserved with a matching cab car. This acquisition brings the size of WRM's fleet on PNAERC to 68 cars (just six shy of SCRM!) and brings the overall PNARC list to 2,086 cars.

Saskatoon Sweeper Update

Many thanks to Cliff Humphrey of the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, who has sent along the following photo and update of restoration work on Saskatoon Municipal Railway 200:

This 1906 Ottawa Car Company sweeper is now operable and can be used to sweep snow. Hopefully, some 'testing' will be done this winter! The cable-lifted work platform and wing plow assemblies are still being worked on, so the car is not technically complete yet. Sask 200 has already been driven around Fort Edmonton in a few tests and display runs; it will officially debut alongside Regina 42 in 2025. The big item on this car is the brushes; the chain-driven mechanism was a difficult system to rebuild, especially using a cast steel chain of uncertain origin (we know it came from 200, but whether it's original from 1906 or a later component is unclear). The brush drive system took a lot of staged testing to ensure it was safe to operate, and a couple months of concerted effort to rebuild the original brush boards with new rattan. The brushes are incredibly loud while operating, and we aren't sure if we'll be able to operate it regularly on our Fort Edmonton track due to how close the buildings (and their windows!) are to our track. Although double-ended, Sask 200 can't run on our High Level Bridge line due to only having hand brakes. ERRS isn't sure how we'll make use of it, but even having a car like this in operable condition for static display will be great for us.

SMR 200 is one of just five Ottawa-built snow sweepers in preservation and is (now) the only one in operational condition. There are some intriguing "missing links" in this car's history, including that it was built in 1907 but didn't arrive in Saskatoon until 1913, with its whereabouts in the interim unknown. I'm also not sure about its history between the Saskatoon system quitting in 1951 and ERRS acquiring it in 1986.

News from Michigan

A couple of updates from Michigan regarding extant electric cars have popped up in the last couple of days. These don't involve updates to the PNAERC list per se, but they're still interesting.

The first is that Grand Rapids Grand Haven & Muskegon 8, the "Merlin," is in the process of getting a new home. It hasn't moved - rather, a substantial brick enclosure is being constructed around the car by the Coopersville Historical Museum. The car already had a fairly nice shelter over it, but of course this will obviously be an improvement and will keep the car entirely protected from the weather. The shelter is also built to mimic the style of the history museum itself, located just a few feet away in the old interurban substation. Very impressive! The photo above comes from the museum's Facebook page.

In less positive news, an abandoned building in Kalamazoo caught fire yesterday and was heavily damaged. This wouldn't be very newsworthy to us except that an ex-Michigan Railways double-truck snow sweeper has been attached to one side of this building for quite some time. It appears that the sweeper was largely unharmed, and that the fire damage was on the other side of the building, but if the building gets demolished, the sweeper will probably go too. This car isn't on the PNAERC roster, but rather on my "non-preserved electric cars" list. I'm not sure who built it or when, but there's reputed to be an excellent book coming out soon on Michigan Railways, so answers may be forthcoming. Anyone interested in a snow sweeper body?

Roanoke Master Unit Changes Hands

News has come via Facebook (no log-in required, just "X" out of the pop-up) from the Roanoke Chapter NRHS that they have acquired Roanoke Railway & Electric 51 from the Seashore Trolley Museum. The car is shown above in an image from the announcement post.

Car 51 was built by Brill in 1929 as Virginia Electric Power 115 and originally it ran in Lynchburg. In 1937, it was sold to RR&E, where it operated for 10 years until it was retired. It was later a diner in Callaghan, Virginia, and was acquired in late 1991 or early 1992 by Seashore as part of the museum's "last round-up" body collecting spree. The car is in rough shape; the photos posted by the NRHS group indicate that its window posts were cut away on one side and it's got structural problems with the roof. It is, however, an undeniably historic car. The "Master Unit" wasn't tremendously successful, with only a handful of cities ordering them, but it was significant insofar as it sought to update streetcar design with the latest automotive trends. It was also an attempt to create an industry-standard car design.

Only four true "rubber stamp" Master Units survive today. Three are from Yakima, including two in complete condition and one that was abandoned in a forest for decades and had a tree fall on it; and then there's Roanoke 51. The Roanoke car is older than the Yakima cars and was built by Brill in Philadelphia, whereas the Yakima cars were built by American in St. Louis. The "true" Master Units are outnumbered in preservation by later, "modernized Master Unit" Brill cars built for Red Arrow and other systems.

Car 51 is the second car in Kennebunkport, after the "Berkshire Hills," awaiting transportation to a new home. I haven't updated car 51's ownership on PNAERC yet; I'll wait until the car has actually moved home to Virginia to do that. But hopefully this marks a new, positive chapter in the car's history.