Through the magic of Google, a link to info about "Berksy"

http://www.jeff-z.com/wks/locoroster/berksy/berksy.html

We now return your topic to the discussion at hand. No further adjustments are necessary to your bandwidth.

In my opinion, the Astoria operation did it right.

The generator car looks good, rather than being a speeder flat with a home depot generator bungee corded to it or some other kitbashed mess. It's enclosed, has really good mufflers, painted very nicely, equipped with headlights. All in all, a very professional job.

Groups would do well to learn from their design.

I'm not sure how they handled the tracking issues, but it seems to do quite well. They travel at reasonably slow speed, but everything looks solid and seems to track fine.

The trolley museum in Appleton Wisconsin ran restored Milwaukee streetcar 846 with a diesel powered generator cart. This operation took place on a short piece of track by a water treatment plant.

In 2002, the car went to the East Troy Electric Railroad museum and now runs under trolley wire.

There's a trolley museum in Appleton, Wisconsin?

There was. It merged with the East Troy museum as part of the deal to relocate streetcar 846 to an operating entity.

Somewhere I have photos of what might have been the primordial "power cart". It was at a museum in Washington (Snoqualmie?) and was hitched to an ex-Yakima Valley Brill Master unit. It was a four-wheeled MW trailer, with an Oldmobile V-8 coupled to a modified trolley-bus motor. This would have been in 1973.
(Fans of 1950's R&B may cue up "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston.)

That was indeed Snoqualmie. As you mention, it was definitely a first generation product. As I recall, the motorman had some sort of control that adjusted the engine RPM, and he'd rev up the gasoline engine before notching out the controller.

I seem to recall that contraption moved on to another NW operation, possibly the Willamette Shore Trolley (not certain of that though, just recall seeing it someplace else...)

Note in the FLIMSIES section today about a fire in this car which, from the photos attached, appears to have been confined to the "nose" at one end of the car.

Awaiting additional info.

Les

As I had pointed out to me, this is not the W5. It is one of those fake trolley buses. Notice it's not on the tracks.

A better picture from the Savannah Morning News http://savannahnow.com/news/2015-06-13/trolley-fire-shuts-down-portion-river-street. Definitely a fake bus.

Someone needs to edit the headline in the flimsies or remove the article.

The original Como-Harriet streetcar "Goat", Dodge flathead 4 cylinder, trolley bus motor.

This is the original configuration, it later acquired a headlight & a homemade from copper tubing oil cooler.

It kept it's original engine as long as it was in MTMs possession, last I heard it was on it's 3rd or 4th trolley museum and one of them may have converted it to diesel.

Mr. Isaacs was a engineer for Onan, so it was well designed and reliable, other than overheat problems on really hot days, so on hot days we sprayed down the radiator with water during station stops to keep it cool.

-Hudson

Andy -

Thanks for the correction. I missed the fact that this was a "fake trolley" and not the W5. If these people (Savannah is far from the only one) would stop calling these vehicles trolley's, it might help avoid errors like this occurring.

Les

The original Keokuk Junction Railway hosted a generator-powered trolley operation called the "Trans-Mississippi Trolley" in the early 1990s. It ran from the Keokuk Union Depot (http://www.keokukuniondepot.org) across the Mississippi on the city-owned swing bridge to Hamilton, Illinois, and then up almost to Elvaston and back. It was also pressed into service during the 1993 flood, to operate across the Keokuk Dam when the highway bridge was out of service (our son rode it to get to work across the river).