I believe I read somewhere that doodlebugs could be used to move a few freight cars in mixed train service but I’ve never seen pictures of this. The pictures I’ve seen either show the doodlebug as a single railcar or pulling a trailing coach or combine. Would they ever be used to move a few freight cars?
I have a doodlebug for the branchline that is currently under construction. At the terminus of the branchline will be a creamery that needs to have two milk tank cars moved each morning to the mainline interchange where they will be picked up by the mainline milk train. The doodlebug provides passenger service on the branchline and I would like to know if it would be prototypical for it to move those two milk tank cars as part of a mixed train. If so, how common would such a practice be?
I know the rule is it is my railroad and I can do whatever I want but what I want is to follow prototypical practices.
Santa Fe and Rock Island used doodlebugs in branchline service to haul freight, during WWII the all electric Vasalia Electric, which had ceased passenger operations many years before, leased a SP doodlebug to move freight this was perferable to leasing steam power as there were no servicing facalities available.
I seen photos in a Trains Magazine(?) where a 'bug was toting two boxcars once or twice a week for the only active shipper on the line…The 'bug was hauling more mail and REA shipments then passengers.
IIRC this branch line was abandon and ripped out by 1959 or 1960…
Santa Fe had one ‘super-doodlebug’ (M190) that was serious branchline power. 900hp prime mover, articulated, trailer half was meant for express, not passengers. It could handle a coach and several freight cars at track speed.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - rail-minibus, no doodlebugs)
According to stories I have heard, from time to time the CB&Q found itself short of power to run its daily turn from Galesburg down to Peoria and back, and in the 1960s found itself powering up the old doodlebug that was sitting in the roundhouse after the passenger run it had been assigned to was discontinued. It was good for only a few cars but that is likely all the traffic on the line anyway.
This might have been written up in Railroad & Railfan years ago. I know I read about it and it was written by Jim Boyd.
I was once lucky enough to get a cab ride on a BN switcher at Yates City which is between Galesburg and Peoria, and the engineer told us of the time in the early 1960s that they were again so power short for the Galesburg to Peoria turn that they actually steamed up the 2-8-2 4960 that was also housed in the old Galesburg roundhouse - a little remarked use of steam in common carrier freight service in the 1960s. The Q also steamed up 4960 to haul freight through Savannah IL during the huge 1965 flood when the water was high enough to short out diesel traction motors but not high enough to stop a steam locomotive.
…which starting at 40 seconds shows a doodlebug with what looks like to me anyway, two box cars and a flat with a tank. A pity that the cameraman didn’t continue the shot, but I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
Shortline Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain RR & Coal Co. handled a daily milk car for the Supplee-Wills-Jones dairy from the PRR mainline connection at Huntingdon to Bedford, PA (the last few miles into Bedford being on PRR branch trackage rights). Brill gas electric railcar M-39 was purchased in 1929 to handle the passenger run, with the Supplee milk car trailing. All went well until M-39 was wrecked. She emerged from the H&BTM shop around October, 1941 as unpowered combine no. 27, painted blue. H&BTM’s last 4-4-0, number 30, was reconditioned and returned to service to pull the unpowered gas electric and milk car until about 1947, when no. 30 was retired (scrapped 10/1949) and replaced by one of the road’s freight 2-8-0’s. I think the milk car continued to operate on that train until discontinuance in the early 1950’s.
This is from America’s Shortest Interstate Railroad by Richard L. Schmeling (South Platt Press, 2011).
The Nebraska-Kansas Railroad served a cement plant at Superior, Nebraska, and as rail service declined in the area, the problem developed of getting the cement to connections over the Burlington (CB&Q).
“Movements began in February, 1955 with one or two boxcars of sacked cement or loaded cement hoppers per trip on No. 15, which then otherwise consisted of diesel-powered motor 9767 pulling a combination car. Such moves were then occasionally taken to the extreme as the 9767 (with 400 hp) was seen battling the westbound trip with fove or six loaded cement hoppers - which did not help the aging motor’s mechanical condition! This arrangement continued through July, 1956, when motor 9841 was permanetly assigned to Nos. 15-16. The 9841, with a 275 hp engine, was incapable of handling more than two loads of cement. This unique option for moving cement out of Superior finally ended wehn Nos. 15-16 were discontinued effective March 2, 1958.”
The main thing to keep in mind is that most gas-electric cars simply did not have much weight in the car body, so their the tractive effort they could deliver was simply not there to move anything but the car itself and maybe a single trailer car of similar weight.
Hauling even a 40’ box car loaded to it max rating, or a full tank carm would be a struggle for most gas electrics, but a freight car with somewhat less than it maximum loaded weight would probably be manageable.
Between Beach Bill and Software Tools, they covered what I was going to point out. Often all they had to work with was 300 hp or so and all that power went to only one two-axle truck in most cases. Under the best of cases, no grade, cars loaded to less than capacity, 3 cars was probably pushing the limit. It’s a little hard to imagine them moving 5 cars loaded with cement, but maybe it was all downhill to get there? In some cases, you were lucky to move a single car. Just don’t expect it to move a lot.
100,000 pounds on the power truck is not unusual for a gas-electric. And 250,000 pounds is typical for NW2’s and SW7’s. So the gas-electric should pull 40% of the switcher. And a switcher can pull maybe 35 cars (I’ve seen one pull 47). 40% of 35 cars is 14 cars. Of course, adding a grade has a huge effect on both.
I have to wonder if it wasn’t so much that a gas-electric couldn’t pull a string of cars as it was that it wasn’t needed and/or appropriate.
And then we can get into union labor rules. A normal freight had a crew of 5. A gas electric does not. Do you think the union would have any problem with using a gas electric as a locomotive? You should.
Gotta remember it’s not a very well distributed weight compared to a switcher. Essentially a passenger car with a motor. There were other factors, too, that limited train length as surely as tractive effort, brakes and draft gear. Unless your doodlebug was spec-ed with it or installed later, again it’s not switcher-class accomodations, so to speak. How much capacity to pump air and the type of master brake valve could be very limiting in terms of handling additional cars. Draft gear could be improved, but with motor cars, you usually try to go light, so factors beyond the draft gear like frame strength and attachment points could limit the options.
As for labor agreements, certainly there would be something to cover such work if of a recurring nature. Fundamentally, there is the difference between freight and passenger service. But passenger trains handled picking up and dropping express cars, for instance. I’m sure the final outcome, why and how successful varied from road to road just as companies today vary greatly in their treatment of employees, it just that when you have a union, as most line did after the mid 1930s, redress was available. It would not surprise me that handling freight would earn extra pay, given you were handling two jobs at once, but I don’t know that for certain. However other situations I’m familiar with would suggest that was the case. If so, men might bid for the job based on what was essentially premium pay. Not such a bad day of extra work if the pay was right.[;)]
I’m not sure it it’s been mentioned yet, but one of the Green Frog Santa Fee Videos by Emry Gulash has some footage of a gas electric swticthing a freight car. IIRC, it does a flying switch manuever to boot.
Right you are but,let’s call that bug a mixed freight since it handles some freight cars The Brotherhood would aprove such a train classifaction since mixed trains was already in the agreement…Would the Fireman’s Union split hairs since the bug is doing the work of a regular locomotive by setting out cars? I dunno.
From page 179 of Edmund Keilty’s “Interurbans without Wires”:
“The Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railroad was persuaded to let Ewbank run tests [of his gas-electric], and the husky 333 managed to pull a 905-ton train of 12 heavyweight passenger coaches along the north bank of the Columbia River.”
There’s a photo.
That’s equivalent to 6.5 fully loaded 5161 cu ft grain hoppers. Without roller bearings. Or perhaps more accurately, 9 “olden day” loaded cement hoppers.
While I suppose it could have been called “husky”, there’s nothing in the photo that indicated it was any different than a typical large gas-electric. It is noted that the engine was 350 HP. And, in the photo, the train is actually a baggage-RPO, a baggage, a baggage, and what looks like coaches.
And as far as labor rules, let’s not forget how long the unions kept firemen on diesels. Long after they had allowed them to not even be on gas-electrics. And two brakemen on a gas-electric? Really? Nope. Gas-electrics were a very real threat to jobs back in the day. But that day was the Depression, and labor was not in a position to make dramatic demands. Well, they were. But they could often be ignored. And were.
It would be useful to know the grade of the test route. I did some poking around to see what the max grades might be. Found that between Pasco and Spokane it was 0.4% and others described it as “water-level route” compared to a parallel NP line, which usually means “not much.”
And this brings up one of those problems with history, the prototype and the way model railroaders think of both. I tend to answer questions that are of a general nature with a general reply, i.e. what was common or expected. Often, model railroaders are seeking to justify the unusual or extreme for any or all of several reasons: the desire to run a favorite loco (or in this case, motor car perhaps); to justify a min radius; or to explain an extreme grade. That’s all well and good, but it tells you about as much about what most people can run a mile in by citing the time of the last Olympic gold medal miler. It would be rather over optimistic about what my time in the mile might be[;)]
So it is an interesting data point, but I suspect rather unusual for whatever reason besides someone thinking like a model RRer and loading her up to see what she could do. All the pics I’ve seen of motorcars in such service tend towards the onesies,
I don’t think your “Olympic” comment applies. The gas electric in the photo looks absolutely typical of a “heavy” gas electric. And it was, of course, a publicity stunt. But it did happen.
Certainly, gas electrics pulling freight was unusual. Most (but NOT all) of the photos in my two gas electric books show no more than one trailer. That was kind of really the point of a gas electric.
On a sort of slightly sidish note, EMC/EMD got its start selling gas electrics. Not locomotives. But they apparently learned a lot while doing so.