Steampunk Motorcycles

Improvised Rail of Negros Occidental

Location: Negros Occidental, Philippines

When a railway company ceases to run trains on a line, oftentimes some local will make money off of the tracks by making their own train. The finest of these are made of buses, and the most humble stretch the limits of the word "train". From Railroads and Ships of the Philippines come these pictures of various modes of improvised public transit:

You can almost see the 60's vision of the future hidden somewhere in these trolley cars.


The remains of a bus-to-rail conversion.



Horse drawn service in Victorias:





Pasay.

Panay Island... is this one powered Flinstones-style?

This guy's got endless locomotive graveyard pictures. The site is entirely in Japanese but it's very pithy!





Negros Occidental even has an Iron Dinosaurs tour of rotting locomotives.

Visit it!


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Galloping Geese!

As rail lines become less profitable, the railroad company must pull service on otherwise functional rail. Sometimes, an interim service is established using a short train or trolley, and a road vehicle is modified to serve that purpose. They delivered mail, carried passengers, were used by inspection crews, or served as the payroll vehicle.

The most famous example is probably the Rio Grande Southern Railway's "Galloping Goose":

6-06-1913 RGS Motor #1 derails and rolls into the Dolores River. Superintendent W.D. Lee and his wife jumped before it hit the water, but Roadmaster Gilland didn't and was seriously hurt. Mrs. Lee refused to ride in the car after this mishap, saying it "bounced too much".


The second Goose #1 was built in 1931, based on a Buick Master Six sedan, converted to rail operation and fitted with an open platform on the rear to carry mail.

Professor Fzz writes:

What wonderful hackery!

Back in the early 90's, I traveled around Ecuador (amongst other places).  These Geese remind me of the "trains" I rode there, on the line from Ibarra down to the northern coast at San Lorenzo.  What really amused me was seeing the driver sitting at the steering wheel, and steering furiously every time we came to a bend.  It took me a while to realize that the old bus steering wheel had been reconnected to activate the brakes.  Truly ingenious. 

These are not quite as steampunk as the Geese, but pretty wacky nonetheless.




Doesn't look like the highest quality engineering, considering the line climbs over 10,000 feet, but it seemed to do the job.

Inspector Car, Jamestown CA

An inspection car on display at Jamestown, Ca. I also spotted this bobbed caboose:

I found this beautiful example in the Adelaide Rail Museum.  Check out the safari windows and bush-rail luggage racks on the fenders:



Underneath you can see its built-in turntable:


There was a picture of a nice Dodge one:


And here you can see the turntable in operation:


Ten Steampunk points to whoever can tell me why they didn't just drive the thing home backwards.

Dark Roasted Blend has a wonderful collection of road-rail vehicles:

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/10/cool-road-rail-vehicles.html

Including these rather delectable examples:











This family takes trips around Canada in this 1957 Chieftan.  The views are nice.

I encourage you to visit these two fine sites on rail cars:

The RGS Galloping Geese

Railcars on the Little River RR

Steampunk Vehicles

I found this beast in the National Museum of Australia:



This is a 4x4 modified to catch buffalo.  Buffalo were introduced into Australia in the 1820s but by the 1960s had become a pesky invasive species that also spread bovine diseases to the livestock.  So they began to offer a bounty, and some tough ole blokes made this truck to catch them live.  In order to do so, they had to make the truck buffalo-proof as well.  This picture is from here:

http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/slideshow_2_2.html#slideTop

...and if you have quicktime you can see a movie of it in action here:

http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/now_showing/old_new_land/encountering_australia/

Visit it!


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A modified M62 on the grounds of VNIKTI (Institute for diesel locomotives) in Kolomna, Moscow:



From the Much Marcle steam rally... check out the vehicle in the background!






Runways need to be cleared of ice, and so jet engines need to be mounted on trucks...

Augur-Drive Vehicles

I've always been an exotic-vehicle enthusiast, and after a few visits to Burning Man, I came up with the idea for an augur-driven vehicle. It would be cool because it would be completely ridiculous and would tear up the ground it drove over. I think the idea came from the fact that my grandpa has a bunch of augurs lying around his farm.

I took my idea to Johny Amerika, who is the sort of guy who could seriously discuss the possibility of building such a thing. We talked about pros and cons and possible issues and I think he even said he'd seen some guys who'd built one. I filed the idea away in the "someday, with funding" section of my brain and didn't think about it for a year.

Then I stumbled across these futuristic images from Russian propoganda. Apparently in glorious communist Russia we will all be driving these things:




One advantage would be that, given the proper bouyancy, the vehicle would be amphibious. I was surprised to see someone had the same idea, but not too surprised, as there ain't much new under the sun.

Later, I was looking through pictures of abandoned Russian junkyards (yes, that's what I do for leisure) when I saw this picture, without a caption:



I was stunned. There before me was exactly what I'd envisioned. Not only had someone come up with the idea, they'd built it, scrapped it, and now it was rusting away without so much as a comment from the photographer like "hey, check it out, no wheels on this one".

With a little more research, I found out what it was. They called it the ZIL-2906. The Nazis had a little guy:





...and I suspect the Soviets adopted the technology. The most surprising thing is that it goes! Check out this video:

Dr. Evermor

Location: Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA

Dr. Evermor is an amazing man who has taught me much even in the brief time I've known him.  You should visit the Forevertron as soon as possible because he is very ill.  He charges no admission, in fact, he took us to Culver's when we visited.  He holds the gallery art world in high contempt and sells his art by the pound. 

One time he drew us a map to a location 20 miles down the road.  The place was crawling with white and black rabbits.  It was a field of large sculptures, though Dr. Evermor said, "These aren't art, they're just energy focusing devices that need to be placed at certain locations around the countryside to focus energy towards the Forevertron."  So you see he considers his birds and such to be art but his machines to be pure function.

To call Dr. Evermor a 'steampunk' would be insulting, it would imply that he is someone who affects retrofuturistic style on purpose.  He's not a steampunk, he is a victorian mad scientist who is constructing a giant copper egg in order to hurl himself into the ether! 



The Forevertron:



Victorian Howitzer:



He likes to make giant birds.  The feathers are rejected blades from a shear factory.  The large fan-like things in the back are snowmaking equipment, they spin in the wind:



http://www.drevermor.com/ seems to have expired its name registration, here is the archive:  http://web.archive.org/web/20051218193821/http://drevermor.com/

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WIBARforever.html

Pax Alexandria wrote:  For a full audio-visual tour,  the doctor's visionary Tesla-sculpture makes an appearance at the climax of Mana: Beyond Belief,  a brilliant post-Baraka documentary available on Netflix.

http://www.mana-the-movie.com

                           
There are tons of wonderful pictures at http://www.ohiobarns.com/othersites/miscellaneous/49-57smp/49-57scrapmpark0.html

The grill was made from some kind of industrial copper kettle.  The bellows work,  and there are various compartments for chilling and firewood and such.  The wheels aren't exactly highway-ready so this is towed on a trailer to events.  It makes coffee,  it has hand-painted cast iron rosework,  and can cook up a LOT of steak.

There are colorful little sculptures sitting on it,  they aren't part of it.  Neither is that phone booth in the background.  But you can see the sign- I think he calls it "Epicurean".  Obviously the canopy has been put away in this picture.

The Dr. took this to a Madison art fair once,  just to cook some grub.  It had the judges going crazy and took the prize,  pissing off all the local artists with their blobby metal sculptures and messy paintings.  The thing is,  if it works it's craft not art,  right?



As far as functionality goes,  this stuff is quite functional.  The forevertron has a series of focusing elements that need to be mounted at specific points in the surrounding 20 miles.  Presumably the Dr. will not fire it up until he is ready to leave this earth.

The giant sand-worms with acetyline tanks for spines are playable as instruments,  and Lady Evermor can play them quite beautifully.

Look at this giant bug... what the heck is that made out of?  Dr Evermor has equipment from Edison's lab as well as NASA's Apollo program.


                     

Dr Evermor actually did a lot of work in the House on the Rock.  He built the carousel and is considered an authority on carousels due to so many years dismantling them.

Strange connection:  A guy I do metalworking for used to be in special effects back before things got all digital and lame.  He did a gig in the House on the Rock for a 10, 000 Maniacs music video,  in which the band has become automata.  The video has lots of glimpses of the automata in there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVVuVOGjGu0
                                                         
I found this video of the Forevertron:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAuRTlZi5v0"

Look for:

-signs of Dr. Evermor's purchase of 10, 000 brass doorknobs
-rejects from the local brass instrument factory
-kife and shear blades used as feathers
-neo-victorian "Love Gun" and Victorian Howizters
-his son's series of robots with a different tool for each hand/weapon
-the forevertron's copper egg (to fire him through the Firmament and into the Ether),  telescope for doubting thomases (10:30),  viewing platform for the Queen (9:08),  power plant parts,  NASA decontamination chamber (10:44),  stuff from Edison's lab.
-propellors seem to grow in dark places at the Forevertron.

At 5:19 you can see that electric-bus-turned-wrecker with the tank engine. It's lifting a pair of giant steel bouys painted to look like cherries.




                              
He has on his lot the collection of an older, deceased builder who was obsessed with building electric vehicles from the 30s to the 60s. The guy took a Chicago Transit Authority electric bus chassis and mounted a radial 10-cylinder sherman tank engine on the bed.  The engine drives a dynamo which then powers the motivation for the bus (so the front cab is full of fuses and where the engine would be there's nothing),  and another electric winch drives a crane arm.  So the thing basically became a bus-sized wrecker,  and for decades he made money as the only guy around who could pull a semi out of a ditch.  Now we have those big mega-wreckers for semis but back then he was the boss.  So eventually he gave it to Dr. Evermor and he used it to haul stuff around the scrapyard.

So you see even the utility vehicles at this wonderful place are fantastical.

Visit it!


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