The technical name for the Doodlebug was gas-electric motor passenger cars. They have been described as 'a temperamental marriage of internal combustion to steel rail, whose operation was foreign to the sensibilities and preconceptions of most any railroad man.'
The motor car's original purpose was to allow more passengers to ride the rails than would have been possible solely with the steam engine 'full service' trains. What it lacked in aesthetics and comfort, the Doodlebug somewhat made up for by being efficient in bad weather as well as good, and it was easy on the track in those places where great speed was not a requirement.
'It could pull a few freight cars and be easy on track in the process,' John B. McCall wrote in his 1977 book 'The Doodlebugs.'
'The steady pull of a geared engine truck didn't have the pile-driving reciprocation of steam power and, for this, rotten ties and antique rail could be thankful.'
And it was economical. It required no fireman and freed full service trains to attend to business elsewhere.
Locally, a Doodlebug train ran for several years between Temple and Brownwood, Brown wood and San Angelo and what McCall describes as a 'particularly strenuous one from Temple to San Angelo, through Brownwood, over the western section of what was originally the main line of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe.'
The Temple-Brownwood local used M150 and M151 (the M stood for motor car) over its 260-mile round trip.
The train made stops in Lampasas and Lometa and was reportedly much beloved locally. Who could not like a train called the Doodlebug, even if the ride was described as 'not unlike a wild ride in an unsprung wagon?'
The Doodlebug motor car's original mission was to provide additional passenger schedules to complement the conventional steam engines on full service lines.
The Brownwood-San An gelo part of the railroad had a full-service train from Dallas and Fort Worth. At Brownwood, most of that train's cars were coupled to a Houston-Clovis, New Mexico train. In Clovis, those cars were added to a Chicago-California train.
'On many such mainline schedules back then, the railroad also ran a local train on a reciprocal schedule to take care of 'all stops' along the line and haul express, maybe mail, as well as passengers boarding at local stops,' McCall said in e-mail. 'The Doodlebug type train was one of these.'
McCall added that local people could mail letters through a slot in the side of the mail car. Postal employees in the Railway Post Office section would then sort the mail en route.
The heyday of the Doodlebug trains on the Santa Fe line was 1934, when the railroad had 39 different schedules and 45 cars. The Depression along with the increasing popularity of highways as a way to get from one place to another and the cost advantage of the motor cars caused many of the old steam engines to be replaced. The unassuming Doodlebug started covering primary passenger schedules on several routes.
The number of Doodlebugs decreased after 1934 as older equipment was retired and schedules were consolidated, but they did not die off completely until the late 1950s and early 60s.
M151 ran between Temple and Brownwood after World War II, and tentative plans were made in 1957 to place the M153 on the Brownwood to San Angelo stub of the run, but those plans never materialized.
By 1958, the Temple-Brownwood run was history. The little M151 and M150 sat idle at the Brownwood roundhouse for several years until both cars were eventually sold for scrap, a perhaps ignoble ending for such a unique part of railroad history.
McCall, in the afterword to his book, wrote that the Doodlebugs more than served their purpose for the Santa Fe.
'They provided services that otherwise would not have been available to the public and functioned, for the most part, in a reliable manner.
'They served as a very remarkable evolutionary bridge between the steal locomotive and the diesel electric that we know today.'
