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 In a way, it's surprising we don't see more automobiles built in the
style of locomotives. After all, some of the earliest steam cars of the
1800s had a lot more in common with steam locomotives than with later
steam cars. Chalk it up, we suppose, to the evolutions of both
automobiles and locomotives to meet vastly different requirements. That
said, we do know of a few - Harry McGee's trackless trains, the Owens
Motor Sales Ford Special, and A.F. Sternad's locomotive automobile - and
we can add the one above to the list today.
Unfortunately, we don't know much about it so far. Like the McGee and
Owens cars, this one was built for promotional purposes: It seems the
Norfolk and Western Railway wanted to drum up passenger business, which
we're sure had dwindled down to almost nothing after the introduction of
the Ford Model T. Virginia Tech's ImageBase,
where we found these two photos, doesn't provide much more, noting only
that the photos come from the Norfolks and Western Railway's public
relations department's archives.
Based on the wheels and general shape of the fenders, we're going to
take a wild guess and say the Norfolk and Western used a mid-1920s Buick
as the basis for their rolling billboard. Anybody care to set us
straight or elaborate on the history of the car(s) in these photos?
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Re: Trackless Trains or Locomotive Automobiles?
