So... this showed up on a local website, with not a whole lot of verification. This might be either a McKeen motorcar copy or a very early predecessor. Railroad mentioned was the Sheffield & Tionesta, year is somewhere prior to 1913, owned by T. D. Collins (Collins Pine). Nebraska is Nebraska, PA, site of the mill and the engine terminal, now underwater at the reservoir at Tionesta, PA.

"Doddlebug"

Another engine that almost was added to the list of Collins' engines was a three compartment engine. It was called the Doddlebug and was designed by J.A. Veile and built at Allegheny Foundry in Warren, PA. This was sometime between 1905 and 1910. It was powered by a gasoline engine and had three compartments comprised of the engine room, freight and mail room and a passenger room. Mr. Veile tried to sell it to Collins but when they made the maiden run, there were some curves that slowed the Doddlebug to where it could not make any time, thus ending the sale to Collins. Mr. Veile tried to sell it to other railroad companies but no one wanted this train of the future. E.K. Small, along with the whole town, watched the Doodlebug come into Nebraska on June 13, 1913 and leave the following day for Warren.

Source: http://genealogytrails.com/penn/forest/ ... ory10.html

Here's a PICTURE of it: http://genealogytrails.com/penn/forest/ ... ory13.html



Doing a little McKeen research shows no easy connection between the McKeen design team ever seeing this car, but two of the early McKeen's were in Bradford, PA - one on PRR and one on Erie - only a few miles away.

From what you can tell on that fuzzy photo, it looks like a McKeen clone with a pointed nose, a power truck with INSIDE bearings and the larger wheel pair toward the inside, a center entrance, and a clerestory roof. Possibly wood. Amazing oval opera windows and arch windows in the coach section.

McKeen filed a whole lot of patents on motorcar design including the center entrance truss, truck design, etc, so either they saw the Warren-built car and protected themselves, or Veile copied a lot that appeared to be patented.

Anybody else ever come across this? This isn't in any railroad history I've ever seen.

The plot thickens, with even more misspellings to throw off researchers...

A slightly later edition of the Petroleum Digest

https://books.google.com/books?id=iQcdAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PR8#v=onepage&q&f=false

indicates that there WAS a "McKean" car, manufactured in Omaha, 55 feet long with 200 hp engine, on site for mutual operation with the Viele car, a few months after the report given above. Surely someone here who knows their doodlebugs knows details of that car.

Can someone skilled in photographic analysis look at the two pictures of the car to see what the 'large' rear wheel of the lead truck actually is? It occurs to me that the original posted picture of the car might be partially retouched, by someone familiar with one of the 'steam motorcars' that used a small 2-2-0 as a 'pony engine' under the front of an otherwise unified-looking car -- and this would jibe with the report in Petroleum Digest that the whole engine arrangement in a Viele car was unitary and could be swapped out in "15 minutes".

I suspect that somewhere, in one of these period publications or an archive somewhere, there is going to be a description of the power truck arrangement. Has someone with skill looked up any of the number of patents attributed to Viele for motorcar detail design?