Article on Soo Line Motor Car
Late in 1999, a friend in Marquette, Michigan mentioned to me that he had recently been approached and asked whether he would be interested in a motor car. An ex-Soo Line employee had recently died, leaving behind several barns packed full of collectibles, including antique automobiles, tractors and a railroad motor car. I immediately expressed an interest. I’ve always wanted a Soo Line car but missed my chance in the eighties when surplus Soo Line motor cars were advertised for sale in The Soo. By the time the car could be viewed, there was a couple of feet of snow on the ground and with no electric light available in a barn packed full of "treasure", not much could be seen other than it was a motor car. The winter wore on and the snow eventually melted, turning all the dirt around the barns into mud. It wasn’t until May that conditions were warm and dry enough for all the items in the barns to be accessible. Even so, when my friend picked up the car, it had to be dragged to the road by tractor as the ground was still soft. I promptly drove up to Marquette in late May to get it.It was a Fairmont M19 motor car, complete, but with some significant rebuilding by the railroad. To save money, body parts off a shorter car had been used to cover the engine compartment. The inevitable gap caused by using parts too short was dealt with by adding a box made out of roughly welded sheet steel. It looked hideous but the engine still turned over and all the other mechanical parts seemed to be there. "Soo Line" and "R1" were stenciled on the front of it. Most importantly, the builders plate for both the car and the engine were still there. Fairmont (now a part of the Harsco Track Technologies Group) still have a collection of motor car and engine build sheets that go back to the 1910’s and for five dollars, they will send you a copy of one.
Front of motor car, showing stenciled "Soo Line" and "R1"
South Shore motor cars were not numbered and memories of an accident forty or fifty years ago are long gone. Thus, the full history of the car will never be known. The presence of a Soo stencil on the front implies that the car made it into Soo ownership at the 1961 merger and that a token attempt was made to number it. However, given its condition it was may have been retired soon after that and taken home as a memento by an ex-DSS&A employee rather than part it out or throw it on the scrap pile.
So what does this car have in its future? At first I was going to return to how it looked when it was received by the South Shore. This is shown on the Fairmont sales brochure for this car (click here to see the brochure). However, Mike Mitzel convinced me that it should be restored as-is, i,e. as the DSS&A rebuilt it at Marquette. Mike also contributed a Soo Line track car permit, shown below.
I hope that eventually this car will run again on South Shore rails. In the late 90's, North Central Railcars operated motor car excursions from Nestoria to Baraga and from Marengo Junction to White Pine. That was in WC days when Ed Burkhardt supported us. However, riding on DSS&A rails now that CN owns them is unlikely.
This car will need some parts replaced, so if you have any Fairmont parts you don't need, please let me know at the email address below:
(1) Copy of notes made by Roy Paananen, including Marquette and Munising newspaper reports and information from the ICC investigation of the October 3, 1952 collision, in the Bob Oom collection.
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Last Edited 28 January, 2018