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Gas-Mechanical Rail Cars

by Omer Lavallee   While the impression is widely held that the use of internal combustion for railway motive power is a recent innovation, we illustrate in this instalment a gasoline-powered, mechanical-transmission railcar which operated more than half a century ago on a light railway line which served the Chateau Lake Louise.   This open-bench passenger car was one of four similar units, two for passengers and two for freight, which were built at Angus Shops in 1912, using 60 horsepower six-cylinder automotive engines and transmissions. In their first operating season,

these engines proved unequal to the average 4% grade of the line, which connected the hotel with Canadian Pacific transcontinental passenger trains at Lake Louise station, and they were replaced by 66 horsepower six-cylinder Pierce-Arrow engines in 1913. In this form, the cars served until 1930 when the line was abandoned, though one of the freight cars was converted into a passenger car in 1914, and two larger, 150 horsepower closed passenger cars were added in 1925.   An interesting feature of the Lake Louise Tramway was that it was narrow gauge, 36 inches, compared to the standard gauge of 4 feet 8 1/2 inches which has always been used on the Company's rail lines,

and is today used exclusively by CP Rail, along with about 60% of the world's railway mileage.   Though the Lake Louise Tramway functioned only in the summer months, during the hotel's operating season, the mechanical success of these little cars inspired later, larger gasoline and diesel-propelled cars used on standard gauge lines of what is now CP Rail. Their modern counterparts are 54 RDC "Dayliner" units, built by The Budd Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and introduced between 1953 and 1958.