Hi All,
please have look onto the following photo…


Railcar onto Bridge in 1863 - With friendly permission of the US Library of Congress

Can anyone of yourself helping me to get more Infos about this prototype railcar?

Hi there Ingo,
I doubt very much whether this type of vehicle would have existed in the Civil War.  To me it looks like a Brill Model 75 car, a South Australian example of which is …


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Brill_Model_75_railcar_%28Pichi_Richi_Railway_no._106%29_on_Woolshed_Flat_bridge.jpg

The Bridge itself may well have been built in 1863 but self propelled railcars did not appear till the early 1900's in any numbers and were usually adaptations of motor buses at first.

Some of these cars were built on Brill frames in South Australia so there could well be differences from US examples (South Australian Railways had the worlds biggest fleet of Brill Cars) and some of the SAR ones had some of their cars with small "Milk Bar" type compartments, and fewer larger windows. These cars did not appear till the 1920's,

Hope this helps you,

Regards from Australia

Trevor

Very similar to these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doodlebug_(rail_car)

Hi Ron,
Probably exactly as you said.  There are a heap of images of what it could have been can be seen at

https://www.google.com/search?q=railroad+doodlebug&rlz=1C1AWFC_enAU758AU759&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib-v-iiaLiAhXn8HMBHagzAOgQ_AUIDigB&biw=1422&bih=595

What I got as an initial impression was the apparently flatter roof line but the shorter wheelbase points more to an EMC car as shown in some of the pix in the above link.  Very few doodlebugs Any idea of the Railroad itself for the trestle?  The height suggests something in the high mountain areas of the US west and Northwest areas which were not developed till after the original Transcontinental Railroad in 1869  i.e. well after the civil war era.

Hope this helps

Trevor

Probably not. First railcars (Doodlebugs) were around 1904-1905. I shall ask our local expert on civil war railroads. I have never come across any reference to a steam railcar in the civil war (doesn't mean there wasn't one). It actually looks like an open ended passenger car on a temporary truck at one end - note the slope.

Nigel

Hi Ingo,

Some research (on another topic) found the following:

2-2-4 steam passenger/business car, of the Columbus, Piqua and Indianapolis Railroad, built in their shops 1861.  Named "Economy". This could be the one in the photo you posted. Engine at one end, 2 driving wheels with a pony truck,  and a veranda the other end over a 4 wheel truck. Union side. Photo shortly.

Nigel

Hi Ingo (and anyone else interested in rail cars),

This is what it looked like:


Note the long waste pipe from the toilet, last thing you want on the rods.

American railroads used 2-2-2 or similar (0-2-2 or 4-2-0 until the 1850's when the "American" 4-4-0 became the standard for main line work. The 2-coupled design continued to be built until the 1890's, primarily for branchline  use or very light vehicles such as the one above. There were quite a number of smaller ones built for railroad use (inspection vehicles).

I think your photograph is the above or something very similar with some armor protection covering the cylinder and rods.

Nigel

The image is taken from the publication " American Single Locomotives and the "Pioneer", by John H. White, Jr., Smithsonian Institute Press, City of Washington, 1973, and is being used for the purposes of education and teaching.

Hi Ingo and Nigel and yep, I am one of the someone elses interested in railcars.

 An intriguing first post Ingo and effective research Nigel in solving the puzzle. Well done to you both for some informative entertainment.

Bill

Hi Bill,

All interesting material.The trestle bridge in Ingo' s photograph is typical of many in the civil war, Ohio to the Arlantic, Pennsylvania to Georgia.  This one is I think located in the Cumberland valley. Apalachia, where much of  the war took place, is a mountainous place. Came as a surprise to me that there were steam rail cars at this date, especially one with a single driver. 

Nigel