The development of gasoline engines led railroads to seek them as higher efficiency alternatives to steam power for low-volume branch line services at the start of the 20th century. The
McKeen railmotor was a line of self-propelled gasoline-powered railcars produced between 1905 and 1917. The engine on the units drove only one set of wheels, and the lack of power and traction, the unreliability of their transmissions, and an inability to reverse, were major limitations.
General Electric ("GE") was the pioneer of gas-electric railcars: GE in February 1906 rebuilt a wood passenger coach into a gas-electric unit which was placed in trial service on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. The
St. Louis–San Francisco Railway was an early adopter of this technology, placing an initial order for ten gas-electric units in 1910 and seven additional by 1913, giving it the distinction of having the largest fleet of gas-electric motor cars in the country. Also in 1931 the
Budd Company entered into a partnership with the French tire company
Michelin to produce lightweight stainless steel
Budd–Michelin railcars in the US. Those advances in lightweight railcar design were important steps in the development of the lightweight diesel-electric
streamliners of the 1930s. No. 2 Production of self-propelled railcars dropped with the onset of the
Great Depression. However, their low operating costs prompted the construction of the
Galloping Goose railcars built by the
Rio Grande Southern Railroad (RGS) from used
Buick and
Pierce-Arrow automobiles with a custom-built cargo box or flatbed behind the body. The RGS built eight Geese in its own shops between 1931 and 1936, including one for the
San Cristobal Railroad. The RGS did not use the Galloping Goose name until very late in its history, instead referring to the vehicles as
motors and later as
buses. According to local folklore, the nickname was coined as a reference to their rocking gait or the goose-like tone of their horns, but rail historian Mallory Hope Ferrell notes that the term
galloping goose had previously been used to refer to doodlebugs operating on other railroads, notably the
Northern Pacific Railway, in the 1920s. All but one of the RGS Geese have been preserved, with several in operating condition. Factory production of doodlebugs was revived in 1949 with introduction of the
Budd Rail Diesel Car. The variant name
hoodlebug was largely limited to the mid-Atlantic states, particularly Pennsylvania. A former
Pennsylvania Railroad bed
converted into a hiking trail in
Indiana County, Pennsylvania, is named Hoodlebug Trail. The last remaining
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF) gas-electric doodlebug, M.177, is on display at the City of Los Angeles "
Travel Town Museum" in
Griffith Park. Two other AT&SF doodlebugs, both converted to diesel-electric locomotion, survive: The M.160 is in the collection of the
Museum of the American Railroad in
Frisco, Texas; the M.190 is on public display at Doodlebug Park in
Belen, New Mexico, south of Albuquerque. . 1943 ==See also==