Found this Galloping Goose replica south of Cortez, CO last week. I did a search and could not find any information on this.
Does anyone know the story behind it? The front wheels look like railroad wheels but i think it had truck tires on the back.
Interesting piece of equipment.

Picture here:
https://s31.postimg.org/h8qp0orpn/IMG_0367.jpg

Well, one might not want to rely too much on Wikipedia, but this article from there says the RGS only built seven such cars. . .and the one in the photo is lettered as a No. 8.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galloping_Goose_(railcar)

For some reason the link as posted doesn't work; you have to close the tail end with a parenthesis in the address bar.


Somebody must be wanting to cash in on the Geese from RGS, and it looks like they may have put some money and effort in.

There is info in an old thread on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum about a rubber tired "fake" goose #8

http://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php ... msg-118132

So, it's a road vehicle that is intended to look like a railroad vehicle that was made from old road vehicles...

Thats pretty awesome.

I can't recall early where I saw this, but in 2012, I saw this on a large trailer with a for sale sign on it. I was heading away from Chama toward the 4 corners area at the time. It was pretty close to a couple of D&RGW stock cars that were abandoned on the side of a state highway, if that helps. Look at 7:32 on this video of the photos I took that year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gLvGNybPG4
I've been wondering about what it was all this time...
I also found a photo of it online with an odd religious sign attached to it:

I wonder how big a job it would be to make a new, on rails Goose from this. . .

I think it has more value as a parade float than restricted to track some where.

Two things.

First - I am reminded of the parade floats used by the various Voiture Locale de La Société des Quarante Hommes et Huit Chevaux (for you youngsters or those of you who did not pay attention in French class back in the third grade, this translates as Local (Box)Car of the Society of Forty Men and Eight Horses). These are local Veterans Organizations stemming from World War 1 (Long history not entirely relevant here except for the original connection to the SCNF goods wagons which were stenciled 40/8 meaning the could accommodate forty men or eight horses. The horses had more space.) While the design varies they are an amalgam of a replica steam locomotive and a box car mounted on a truck chassis. These weren't much as railcars but they certainly got the message out to crowds who would never see or maybe even hear about the Merci cars

Second - Making a new Goose from the parade float seems like doing it the hard way unless you want to simply replace and properly gauge the wheels and there are several reasons that might not work well. It would seem far easier to find some three foot gauge trucks, a box car body (Allen Harper are you listening?) and either a Wayne school bus body or a touring car replica. Remember that the basic design started as a Pierce Arrow touring car hung on the end of a boxcar and that the rebuilds actually replaced the Pierce Arrow body with the more spacious school bus body.

GME

From the narrow-gauge discussion (which can be onerous to read through because of the way its software displays, or rather doesn't display, thread contents), this was built in the 1990s by someone in the Delores area, primarily as a parade vehicle. Here is a contemporary picture, "decolorized and backdated as an April Fool's joke"


It should be no more difficult to adapt this for rail use than the methods used for historical 'geese' -- more to the point, it should be possible to make up conversion wheels to fit the existing front 'truck' and make arrangements to lock the steering (probably via a key steering-column lock).

Ducking for cover: you could install pickup-style 'hi-rail' adapters on it...

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These things were meant to be simple cheap and straight forward using existing stuff. It looks like a cut down school bus so it is of to a good start. Most bus conversion were single rear and this appears to be a tandem. Not a big problem since the rear axle will be fixed, not swiveling. the tandems on the larger geese were freight car trucks. Most of the conversions used the automotive driveshaft. I believe the articulated geese had a sprocket and chain arrangement to the second axle. Unless you simply replaced the front wheels with rail wheels steering was accomplished with a small locomotive-style four wheel pony truck which both supported the front end and led the car around curves. If you had a single front the steering linkage would be disconnected. On some cars this could be quickly reconnected to allow the vehicle to operate off of the track. Assuming axle length is correct and there are no issues with clearance it looks possible as long as you could adapt the steering (Is that front 'truck' with the trailer wheels dummy or steerable? Just how does the driver steer that thing?).

Hirail would take require cutting away some of the rear end for access to the gear and a somewhat more substantial front bumper.

Either conversion would make for an interesting vehicle and fit within the original concept. I like it.

GME

I think one problem is most American made cars and trucks were standard gauge, or pretty close to it. I know my '64 Chevy wagon had no trouble centering itself on the rail for a trip down the museum mainline. A school bus chassis would be the same or possibly wider, so without much modification it could become a standard gauge Goose, but narrow gauge would be a lot more work.

Remember, the real Geese were all built from older touring cars, not school buses; the bus bodies came later, grafted on the touring car chassis. Since the RGS didn't retain anything but the drive axle, most all the rest of the running gear was fabricated specifically for the job.

The real question is, Why? All the Geese have been saved, except No.1, and that's been replicated. Where would one run it?

Additionally, the "Boxcar" rear sections of the RGS Geese were built up from scratch; they were not originally boxcar bodies.

Seems to me this might be an opportunity to re-create the arrangement used on the older Evans Auto-Railer,

http://www.oocities.org/trackworker.geo/evanstext1.htm

with an interesting possibility for narrow gauge application -- it might be possible to approximate outside-swing-hanger geometry on a truck or axle using outside bearings.

I'd also be at least tempted to see whether measurements could be taken from the Leyland rail bus preserved at Seashore to adapt that primary and secondary suspension approach. Adapting Wickens' ideas about suspension geometry to something like a rail conversion should be relatively direct and would afford increased safety in case of a runaway...

I had college friends who pointed out that the track of a mid-'70s Chevy Nova was exactly right to permit use as a kind of hy-rail vehicle. As with the early generation of 'Micheline' railcars, use could be made of the deflection of the tread where tires contacted the railhead to produce strong self-steering effect, with the relatively soft suspension and good damping of (then) modern automobile practice prcluding wheels bouncing off the rails (as apparently so commonly encountered in the experiments of the '20s and '30s). I do not know whether they aired the tires down for this, but this was back in the age of relatively low pressure and bias-ply nylon cord construction -- I would NOT want to see how long it would take to reach Sep City doing this with steel-belted radials ;-}

I note this approach is NOT used either with contemporary pickups or with Brandt units. That is probably for the better!

Turns out there's video of the Evans Auto-Railer in action, starting at 3:05--and the opening segment features the Florida East Coast and a 4-8-2--though I can imagine the noise coming from the railroad today if you tried what Chevrolet did as stunt in 1935!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRkWK2mvXfQ

Other Auto-Railer material:

http://www.wodfriends.org/autorailers/

From Shorpy:

http://www.shorpy.com/node/17521?size=_original#caption

http://theoldmotor.com/?p=148269

Scroll down to see an apparent freight train version:

http://hankstruckforum.com/htforum/inde ... ic=57125.0