FAIRMONT MOTOR CAR AND SUPPORT CAR
The museum owns a pair of Fairmont motor cars, also referred to as speeders. These small, gasoline-powered, rail vehicles were used by railroads for nearly a century to inspect, maintain and repair track, signals, bridges and other elements of the physical plant.
Fairmont Machine Company of Fairmont, Minnesota, was founded in 1905. That same year, the company installed a one-cylinder, two-cycle, gasoline powered engine on a railroad handcar, kicking off the era of mechanized track maintenance vehicles. As the name implies, handcars were powered by people, limiting the daily miles of inspection, maintenance and repair activities. They were also exhausting to the workers using them. Motor cars represented significant mechanized progress for improved productivity related to these tasks.
In 1909, the Fairmont President Frank E. Wade expanded the company’s focus on gasoline powered motor cars. In 1915 the company’s name was changed to the Fairmont Gas Engine and Railway Motor Car Company. Success led to another name change in 1923: Fairmont Railway Motors, Inc.
While there were at least nine U.S. and five Canadian companies that produced motor cars, Fairmont was the market leader, ultimately producing 73,000 by the time the last one rolled out of its plant in 1991. Motor cars usually operated with a one or two cylinder gasoline engine, with a track speed maximum of between 20 and 40 m.p.h. They weigh between 600 and 1,000 pounds and could accommodate 1 to 4 people. Larger section cars accommodated 8-10 people, with work gang cars accommodating up to 100 workers. The section and work gang cars weighed 1,500 – 5,000 pounds and utilized 4-, 6-or 8-cylinder engines, which were needed to pull carts with materials and/or workers.
Our motor cars are models M9 and S2 and were owned and operated by the Wichita Union Terminal Railway (WUT), which was created in 1911 to construct Wichita Union Station and connect the railroads operating passenger trains to and from the station. Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific (Rock Island), St. Louis – San Francisco (Frisco) and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (Santa Fe) passenger trains used union station when it opened in 1914. Today, Union Pacific and BNSF Railway own WUT.
The M9 was listed in the Fairmont catalog as the “safe easy” model that accommodates 1-4 people, with variations produced between 1931 and 1976. The S2 was listed in the Fairmont catalog as a “standard section” motor car that accommodates 1-8 people, which was typically the size of a section gang responsible for a section of track, with variations produced from 1937 to 1961. Unlike the M9, the S2 model has a tow hitch for pulling carts. By 1949 Fairmont was manufacturing 19 models of motor cars in 11 track gauges ranging from 23 inches to 66 inches. The museum also owns a crane cart that can be pulled by our motor cars, as well as a flat cart. The crane can lift 3,000 pounds of rail or ties.
In 1979, Fairmont was absorbed by Harsco Rail, and in the 1990s railroads began transitioning from motor car inspection to hi-rail vehicle inspection. Today’s hi-rail vehicles are typically pick-up trucks with both regular tires for highway and street driving, and hydraulic rail wheels that allow the driver to driver on the track.