The S.D.C.&E.Rwy. McKeen Car "Cuyamaca" is finally on her way!!!

Wow! This is a feat in itself! Good luck on the rebuild. I hope you have some contacts at the Nevada Railway Museum where the currently only operating mckeen car exist and find out what they used for a power train as well as that unique drive wheel.

I am in contact with the Nevada State Railroad Museum, and I know what they used for a drive system, however their system is very nice for slow speeds under 20MPH, I will probably need to be able to reach 50 or 60 for MTS and other services, so I plan on using a large enough motor to reach those speeds, and to do so with a Diesel Electric drive.  We will hide the modern equipment and try to quiet it as much as possible. We will also try to create and pump fake engine sounds from the cab to make it sound like a real engine is instead running the car.  As for the flywheel (?) that will also be powered and made to work like the original. 

You are taking on a real, tough project!  God Bless you for your efforts.  I believe that that a restoration of a car like this is really significant and worthwhile and should be well funded.  It's a shame that so much of that car-body is apparently missing.  But, like the old adage states:  "If it was built once, it can be built again."  What RR was the original owner?

Paul Fischer

Thank you, I know the car is in bad condition, but about as much is left on this car as on the Virginia and Truckee #22, only the panels are rusted away unlike the #22, however the panels on both cars were, and are going to be replaced.  There's hope for the car, and thankfully the frame is in really good condition.  

Perhaps you have already communicated where it was found - I must have missed it. But - where was it found? What a great bit of archaeological work must have been involved.

BTW, you have a great name.......should be a hedge fund manager or a consumer packaged goods product manager!

Thank you, the car was in Anchorage, Alaska, and I think I'll be busy with the railcar for some time, and I have my dad's businesd to work at for until I take it over.  

I just wish that MTH would reconsider producing this rare, very early motor car prototype.  They had gone through the design stages, built a pre-production sample and then cancelled the whole project.  Hate to see that after all the time and investment that had been given to the project.  I saw the model at York and it really looked nice, but, foolishly I didn't order one at that time.  Maybe my one order would have pushed MTH over whatever their minimum was and they would have gone ahead with the model.

Paul Fischer

Because 3-D printing can only make the side panels without proper color or detail, I may ask MTH in a letter if they would consider making them now.  

Wow...and I was just in Anchorage this past August!   That is REALLY putting your money where your mouth is, to actually acquire and recover that McKeen!  Good job!  Best of luck in preserving and restoring that piece of history.  (I DID reserve an MTH one, to no avail)

Thank you, I'll see if I can persuade someone over there at MTH, but no promises.  I'd like one in O scale. But I've kinda moved on to a different scale.   1:1scale. 

It looks like this topic has been idle for a while.

I have been very interested in McKeen Motor Cars, particularly the two 70 foot cars that ran on the Denver Laramie and Northwestern from Greeley to Denver.  My goal, at this point, is to build an O scale model (actually Proto48) to display at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum.  Because it is only for display, I don't plan to power it.

I have been gathering information from the Nevada State Railroad Museum.  I was able to see #22 while it was being restored and took lots  (not enough) of pictures.  I have a stack of drawings of various detail parts.  Unfortunately, many are copies of copies of copies and dimensional data isn't clear.

Right not, I'm working on CAD drawings to use to 3D print many (if not all) of the detail parts.  It can be laborious work but I'm enjoying it.  The devil is in the details and there are a lot of details.

Darrel