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Doodlebugs, The by John B McCall Santa Fe Hard Cover
Doodlebugs, The by John B McCall
Hard Cover
256 pages
Copyright 2002
CONTENTS
Acknowledgement 9
Foreword11
Introduction 13
Chapter 1: Santa Fe's Motor Car Era and Schedule Evolution 21
Chapter 2: The Early Years37
Chapter 3: Building The Fleet- - -Model 148 Cars61
Chapter 4: Long Distance Runners- - -The Brill 860's 97
Chapter 5: The Ultimate Doodlebug- - -the M.190 109
Chapter 6: Dieselization of the Fleet 121
Chapter 7: The Final Step: Rail Diesel Cars 142
Chapter 8: The Trailer Cars 152
Chapter 9: Almost Doodlebugs- - -The Inspection Cars 169
Appendix:
Paint Schemes 174
Motor Schedule Evolution 184
Motor Car Roster 199
Trailer Car Roster 217
Motor Car Assignments 231
Afterword256
FOREWORD
My interest in Santa Fe's motor cars goes back to the early days of World War II when my dad worked as a diesel maintainer out of Kansas City. His office was the engine room of one of the new streamlined diesel-electrics and, depending on what day of the week it was, he would catch the Super Chief, the Tulsan, the Chicagoan, or the El Capitan. He began his career with the Santa Fe in 1918 (at age 16) as a machinist apprentice in Sweetwater, Texas - where he would Probably have ended his days but for luck and mother's urging to "go to diesel school."
So we moved to Kansas City and found the only way to return home to Sweetwater was to catch Tr. 27 to Wichita and there board motor train Tr. 45 for Sweetwater. The consist was usually one of the big Brill M.160s, a baggage car, and a steel-underframe partition coach - stove-heated. The old Orient line to Sweetwater (and on San Angelo and Alpine) was light rail and largely it711Dallasted because much of the country through which it all was ballast to begin with.
North of Altus, Oklahoma, near Lugert and just south of Lone Wolf, there is a deep curving cut through beautiful red quartz rock. The track was typical branchline fare with weeds and a mound of reddish dirt running between the rails, covering the ties. I can remember the thrill of standing in the rear vestibule of the coach, holding to the end gate, watching the red dust and tumbleweeds boil up behind the train as we went around the curve in that cut.
There was nothing quite so good as a shoebox lunch of cold fried chicken and white bread balanced on your lap as the uneven track bounced you back and forth in your seat, or more refreshing than a drink of lukewarm water from a triangular paper cup. A wet paper towel felt good on the face and neck after a hundred miles of dust had fused with summer perspiration.
During the war, we were moved to Winslow, Arizona with the new freight diesels and in 1945 came back east along with a few of them to Cleburne, Texas. Those motor car rides down the Orient were a thing of the past - mostly forgotten. Once or twice during high school and during the summer of 1955 when I went to work in the coach shop at Cleburne there would be a doodlebug in for some light repairs - and I'd remember.
One night in 1958 I was visiting in Sweetwater again - urbane, grown-up, college student - and I heard that familiar two-tone air horn. A fast drive out to the depot and there sat M.162 and chair 828... alive and well! It only ran as far north as Altus by that late date, but it still went up the Orient!
The rest of that year was spent on long drives to Englewood, Kansas, Spearman, Texas, and Carlsbad, New Mexico searching out the last few operating doodlebugs on the Santa Fe. Whatever else it did, it made a railfan of me.
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