All aboard

While steam power dominated the first century of the history of the railways, experiments with other forms of motive power date back a long way. Electric power came first (as far back as 1837), but by the turn of the century internal combustion engine was being used by some pioneers, like the McKeen Motor Car Company.

Founded by one of its engineer as an offshoot of the Union Pacific Railroad, and always closely associated with that group of railways, the McKeen company produced a range of petrol-engined railcars from about 1905 to 1917, most with a strikingly distinctive "knife-blade" front:

The porthole windows were another distinctive feature, apparently intended to provide greater strength than would be left with traditional square windows:

Most of the railcars had a rather striking rounded back, too.

That was one of the longest models in the range, an example preserved in the Nevada Railway Museum, but shorter versions were produced including a few that were exported to Australia (where the central door was raised high for the traditional high platforms -- in America, the centre doors drooped down to the ground):

The interior looks a bit spartan -- but by the standards of the day this was pretty high quality:

There's something rather sleekly stylish about this design:

And that knife-blade front with the single headlamp is a design triumph.

These pioneering railcars came too early: while the bodies were mechanically sound, the engines on which they relied were hopelessly underpowered and unreliable.

The economic fundamentals wouldn't go away (railcars required a crew of two, steam locomotives a crew of three -- although at a time when wages were cheap this was less of an issue, as the century progressed the economics would be transformed), and railcars would have a big future. The McKeens would not be part of it.