Reservist's hobby has him riding the rails Published July 6, 2006 By SrA Chris Bolen 434th ARW Public Affairs GRISSOM AIR RESERVE BASE, Ind -- Many folks know Master Sgt. Les McConnell the Reserve historian or civilian fireman; but many don't know him as an engineer. Sergeant McConnell's love of railroading has become a serious hobby with a certain amount of labor involved. You might call it a "labor of love with rail equipment," he said while sporting an oily engineer's hat and bibbed overalls. One of those loves is a vintage 1953 Fairmont S-2 track inspection motorcar also referred to as a speeder car, or just speeder for short. His speeder was manufactured by the Fairmont Gas Engine & Railway Motorcar Co. of Fairmont, Minnesota. Originally used by the Nickel Plate railroad on its main rail line out of Chicago, its primary use was transporting workers for track maintenance. Sergeant McConnell bought the speeder about eight years ago from a retired railroad conductor. Most speeder cars were designed to carry up to a crew of six to perform maintenance on assigned sections of rail road tracks. Comfort was not a consideration in their design. The cars transported workers in what today would be considered primitive conditions with open sides and back and sporting only the long, wood covered engine compartment for seating. The plucky little cars rolled along at speeds of up to 40 mph, propelled by a single cylinder 12-horse power, two-cycle engine burning a gasoline and oil mixture for fuel. Sergeant McConnell refers to this as a "hit and miss" type of engine, and it was originally equipped with a hand crank starter. The speeder gets roughly 20 miles per gallon of gas however "the gas mileage is actually higher than the water per mile," he notes. Like most internal combustion engines, water cooling is needed. On the front of the car is an evaporator or condenser that everyone mistakes for a radiator. Unlike an automobile which uses a radiator with a water pump, the speeder uses a water "jacket" around the single engine cylinder for cooling. The water is not pumped, it merely sits. As the engine heats the water it rises upward through the condenser where it cools, and drips downward to pool in the jacket and start the cooling cycle over again. The sergeant has taken his speeder on trips across Indiana via rail lines. He's among hundreds of people who own speeder cars and take trips via the railroads, abiding by the regulations enforced by the Federal Railroad Administration. These regulations include strict matters of right-of-way. Trips must be preplanned in advance with all the concerned railroads traveled on to avoid crossing tracks with a regular train. Speeder operators prepare like pilots by filing a flight plan before departure. There are strict guidelines that must be followed and there are blocks of time given to you to travel across a specific sections of track. In the event you actually have to avoid a train, you can go to a siding and use a switch to move over onto the side track, or stop at a crossing and remove your speeder. In the later case, there are long lifting poles which are stored in the chassis of the car. You can pull them out and use them to move the car off the tracks much like a wheel barrow. He feels that one of the most rewarding things about traveling via a motorcar or speeder is the expressions on people's faces as he rolls through a railroad crossing. "People's faces have the expression of someone seeing a Model-T or a Stanley Steamer from a museum," he said with a big mustachioed grin.
