Ol’ Scotty “Casey Jones” G sent in this tip. I can’t get enough railroad history and just anything to do with trains. I know these speeder car articles aren’t for everyone, but I thought I’d give this one a try. This Fairmont A6 Gang Car is listed here on Facebook Marketplace in Waconia, Minnesota, and the seller is asking $6,500. Here is the original listing.
Aerodynamics wasn’t on the drawing board for pragmatic railroad engineers and rail equipment designers; it was usually all business. Of course, some locomotives and rail cars were streamlined and otherwise designed to be sleek and beautiful. As far as tough, working rail equipment went, it was usually the one that worked best for the longest time at the lowest price, yet remained tough and dependable. This one is wearing 20-inch steel wheels, and an option would have been “rubber cushion wheels” for a smoother ride.
I’ve wanted a “speeder” or whatever other type of these little rail maintenance cars are called for years. Probably decades, actually – since I was a kid. Made for track inspections and other maintenance work, this Fairmont’s number plate is so worn out that there is no way to tell the exact model or other information from it. Kudos to the seller for showing two photos of it, though. I’ve lost several years of my life trying to read that number plate with no luck at all. There would have been four boxes, listing the Class, Series, Special, and Group numbers or letters, and I can’t make out any of them.
We do know this is an A6 gang car, which is not always indicative of the number of passengers or workers it can carry. The A6 is said to seat up to 10 workers. They are sometimes shown without a cab, as seen on page 16 of the coolest brochure you’ll see all year. The website shown here says that an A6 carries six passengers, so without the number plate, we’re lost. A speeder car like this would be a pretty straightforward restoration project. There is some metalwork to do, some woodwork, and some mechanical and/or engine work. Some of these bigger cars would have had sliding doors on the sides, depending on the model.
Powering this maintenance car is a Ford flathead V8 with 85 horsepower. The brochure says it’s backed by a 4-speed transmission. We have to assume that this one isn’t currently in operating condition, as it’s sitting outside. At $6,500, it’s on the high end of what we’ve seen for speeder prices in the past. Are any of you into dreaming about restoring a speeder and riding it down an abandoned rail line?
I hope it will fit in my gold mine.
LS swap.
Memories! when a little kid in the 40s, we lived in a logging camp in western Oregon–center of coast mountains. We did have rail service, the passenger rail service into and out of camp was by speeder, almost like the one here. It was about a 40 mile run through the mountains to reach where you could catch a bus to Portland. The speeder pulled up next to the cook house, my dad was the camp cook. My brother and I would help unload bakery bread to stack on the shelves in the cook house. I never got to ride the speeder but my grandmother did often (except in winter). Seeing this makes it “seem like yesterday”.