The Evans autorailer -- and the automobile pictured at the bottom of this page -- were obviously fitted to run only on the rails. In the eras before highway systems were as broadly and as well developed as they are today in the United States and Europe (and still in places where, for whatever reason, tracks are laid but few roads are paved), vehicles other than trains have been fitted for the rails; some, moreover, are readily bimodal and can be relatively quickly adapted for travel on both rail and road.
Images of a variety of vehicles of this sort are, or once were, available at several sites on the WWW:
(1) an American veteran and railroad enthusiast has on display a military transport truck from the era of the Korean War;
(2) the web site of the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry at one time displayed a photograph of a bimodal school bus. Although that image has now vanished, FOWOD's webmaster archived a copy of it -- now to be found below;
(3) a railway enthusiast offers a photograph of another autorailer that once ran along the W&OD.
Today the term AutoRailer™ (note the capitalizations) appears to have become a trademarked name and is employed in reference to various sorts of trailer and van whose purpose is to transport cars from their point of origin to a dealership.
Anyone browsing this page who either knows of other images of autorailers on the web or has one that may be shared, drop the webmaster a message, please.
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Schematic of an Evans Autorailer
235hp 0-6-0Ds, USA/TC 7731-8
At the end of World War II, Evans built for the U.S. military in Europe (specifically, the USA/TC) a small number of autorailers. These shunting diesel locomotives, small and bimodal, were particularly well suited to relatively easy conversion between travel on the then much disrupted railways and on the roads. All six wheels, ordinary truck tires upon which rested the entire weight of the car, were driven by a hydraulic transmission. Two retractable pairs of flanged guide wheels, 16 inches in diameter, assured bimodality; when not on the railway tracks, the vehicle was steered by the rear wheels beneath the cab.
(Many thanks to Rudi Heinisch for the reference to R. Tourret, Allied Military Locomotives of the Second World War [Abingdon, Tourret Publishing, 1995], from which the schema and information are taken) |
An early article from 1935 concerning the then newish Evans Autorailer
An Erstwhile Alaskan School Bus
photo formerly at http://www.alaska.net/~rmorris/chitna1.jpg, but now evaporated --
• SIC TRANSEUNT IMAGINES RETICULI •
A Decaying Autorailer in Superior, WI
photos graciously supplied by Kris Roenigk of Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
A Quisling's Command Car
| Jirí Menzel used this autorailer to subtle comic effect in Closely Watched Trains (1966; DVD ed. 2001 [04/20:27]), a film set in the closing months of 1944. Here the vehicle, forcing its Nazi officials forward, exits briskly in reverse from the train station of a sleepy village in occupied Czechoslovakia. |
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