Union Pacific Motor Cars
This page was last updated on September 22, 2004.
Motor Car Roster — A roster of Union Pacific's motor cars, including the McKeen cars, the EMC cars, the Brill cars, and the cars that UP itself built.
A photo in an issue of The Streamliner shows a view of McKeen motor car M-23. Great photo! The caption suggests that the photo was taken during a run to evaluate some device mounted to the front truck. That may be true, but I think that what it really shows is M-23 on its first trip west. Notice how shiny the car and trailer are (sticky fresh, as some would say). The photo is dated May 17, 1915. Available records show that M-23 was built in May 1915. (The Streamliner, Volume 14, Number 1, Winter 2000, page 10)
This photo is unique because it shows the first use of the M prefix to the motor cars, since M-23 was the first car built after the 1915 renumber plan was put into place. All of the cars built before that time, from UP 1 (in 1905) to UP 22 (in 1909), were later renumbered to their M series numbers.
Clive Carter had an excellent article about UP's self-propelled cars in the June 1998 (Vol. 19, No. 6) issue of Mainline Modeler.
A history of Union Pacific's motor cars
(from the book, "Union Pacific Diesels, 1934-1982, Volume 1" by Don Strack)
The first internal-combustion rolling stock on UP was a series of self-propelled McKeen passenger cars, powered by small gasoline and distillate-fueled engines. These motor cars were designed by UP's superintendent of motive power and machinery, William McKeen, and were built beginning in 1905 by UP in the railroad's Omaha, Neb., shops. In 1908, UP organized the McKeen Motor Car Co. as a subsidiary to sell McKeen cars to other railroads, and production continued in the Omaha shops. With their distinctive wedge-nosed front ends, these cars were designed and operated as self-contained passenger trains, but by 1909, they were powerful enough to pull a trailer.
Competition for McKeen's mechanical-transmission motor cars came in 1911 when General Electric released its own design for an electric-transmission motor car. McKeen's largest vehicle, a rounded-front 300-horsepower car with a three-axle power truck, was completed in 1916 as a demonstrator for Southern Utah Railroad in Utah's Carbon County coal fields (it was delivered on January 1, 1917). The last McKeen cars were completed in 1917, which was also GE's last year for motor-car production. The production of motor cars ceased with the United States' entry into World War I. By 1920, McKeen's mechanical-transmission car had lost sufficient interest among potential customers that UP bought full control of McKeen and formally stopped production. Union Pacific completed several motor cars for itself during mid-1923, using the remaining McKeen bodies.
A growing interest for electric-transmission motor cars after the war led to the formation of Electro-Motive Corp. in 1922 to again market gas-electric motor cars to America's railroads, taking advantage of better and more powerful engines and better electrical control. In 1927, UP began buying Electro-Motive motor cars, receiving 15 cars during 1927 and 1928. Also in 1928, UP acquired two motor cars from Brill, and another two came from Brill in 1930. Several of the mechanical McKeen cars were converted to gas-electrics during the 1920s, and the last mechanical McKeen cars were retired in 1942. Electric-transmission motor cars with both gasoline engines and distillate engines remained in service on UP throughout the 1940s and 1950s, with the last one being retired in 1961.
Between 1920 and 1932, the number of passenger-miles for America's railroads had dropped by two-thirds, inversely matching the tripling of automobile registrations during the same period. The public wanted faster schedules and more comfort. To furnish faster schedules, Union Pacific needed either lighter trains or more powerful locomotives. UP chose to pursue a lighter train, based on its experience with self-propelled motor cars, with their electric transmissions and increasingly powerful distillate engines during the late 1920s. Lighter trains would also spring from developments in lightweight metals during the post-World War I years, and from aerodynamic designs for rail equipment (specifically, Pullman's Railplane of March 1933). More comfort, especially for business and upscale pleasure travelers, would come with new, more modern designs. These developments led Union Pacific in 1933 to ask for the development of the lightweight, articulated passenger train, which became known as The Streamliner. Union Pacific saw The Streamliner as the answer to what the traveling public wanted, and the first Streamliner was M-10000.
System Repair Shop
A new engine house was constructed at Grand Island, Neb., in 1910, and at that time, Grand Island "became the major system repair point for a growing fleet of passenger motor cars. The motor cars continued to be repaired at Grand Island until the last of them were retired." (The Streamliner, Volume 2, Number 2, April 1986, page 21)
Other information:
In the Spring 2001 issue of The Streamliner, Don Lodge wrote a letter to the editor in response to a statement by Steve Orth, in which Steve said, "Lightweight, internal; combustion engine-electric power cars were already in use on the railroads. A good example of this technology was the McKeen car."
Mr. Lodge writes:
"The McKeens were gas mechanical and thus cannot be considered direct predecessors of the early Streamliners. In fact, the McKeen cars might be thought of as one of a number of dead ends in the history of self-propelled rail cars."
"The first Union Pacific gas electric cars came in 1927. these were M-29 and M-30, built in the company shops from unused McKeen parts, and M-31 to M-35, built by St. Louis Car for EMC. According to Keilty, the shop-built "McKeens" utilized four unused car sides, Hall-Scott gas engines, and electrical components from general Electric. It was the electrical parts from GE that were critical to these cars' success."
"GE's pioneering work in designing a method of tieing together the control of a gasoline engine and an electric generator led to the modern day diesel locomotive."
Further reading:
Carter, Clive. "Union Pacific Self-Propelled Cars" Mainline Modeler, June 1998, Volume 19, Number 6, pages 20-27.
Kratville, William, and Harold E. Ranks. "Meet Mr. McKeen" Motive Power of the Union Pacific (Barnhart Press, 1977) page 123; also motor car roster located at back of book.
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