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     A Railbus of some kind was to be found on just about every railroad, large and small. They usually had a "nickname" of some sort, adopted by the Road Crews as well as the Roundhouse "worker bees" who had to keep them running... some of these "nicknames" were not complimentary and can not be printed here ! On some roads they were just know as "Critters".

      On most roads there were one of a kind, built as an experiment ,usually by combining parts from other pieces of equipment on or near the railroad destined for the scrap yard, but someone would convince a Roundhouse foreman, or member of management that it would fulfill a useful purpose at low cost to the railroad.

      Most of these did not work out very well and wound up as part of the Maintenance of Way Dept, or, as "Railfanning" started to be popular after WW II used for Railfan Charters, or to take local groups such as the Rotary Club out to a State Park or to the Beaches.

     There was one major exception to this "rule" and that was the Rio Grande Southern in Colorado, that built the famous "Galloping Goose" so they could keep the mail contract they had with the Post Office, and yet not have to use a steam loco, cars, and a full crew for the travels up and down the 50 miles of trackage they had to service with mail. Eventually they actually had 7 "Galloping Gooses" all of similar, but not identical designs.

     A few railroads, such as the New Haven actually had some built brand new for service on branchlines where the passenger traffic was low and did not warrent running a locomotive, cars, and full train crew up and down the branch for a handful of passengers each day.

      So while we have actual photos of the New Haven units and the "Maintenance of Way" is based on a Railbus that is at the St. Louis Transportation Museum, the others are more of less "what could have been", but hey this is supposed to be a fun Hobby, if you like the idea then buy one and have some fun on your layout, or the club layout with it... it will be a "conversation" starter everytime you run it on the layout.

A word about the Con-Cor Trains Railbus Model:

     Just like the railroads often did, we took our existing "HO" model of the Pre- WW II "PCC car" made it ready for standard 2-rail operation. (Called Hi-Rail by some). We pulled out the electric motor, and put in a 6 cyclinder Diesel from one of the old Ford Trucks sitting unused in the yard. Then we took off the trolly pole since we would not be running under trolley wire, and then added an air intake to where the trolley pole mechanism used to be to get some fresh intake air down to the diesel, as well as to the interior of car for cooling on those hot summer days... sorry guys no A/C aboard.

     And since we needed to repaint the old rusted car body, we decided we may as well paint it in a color that would attract the Tourist and Charter Trade and drum up some extra cash flow for our Organization. (a "503c" non-profit... and woohoo, we are selling seats very nicely thanks you, especially on the weekends.)

Features of the Con-Cor Trains Railbus Model:

Interior (seats etc)

Interior Lighting

Painted Motorman figure

DCC Ready**

Optional DCC Sound Decoder available directly from Con-Cor Trains

Smooth drive train with 5 pole skewed armature motor

8 Wheel Drive

Run on 9 inch radius (at slow speed)

Lighted Destination Board

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A word about our Choice of Paint Schemes      For this new series of Railbus models (or Critters to some), we chose some of the most famous of Railroad paint Schemes over time. Not appropriate for your time era you say, well consider this, all Railroad and Transportation Museums have at least one Railbus in their collection. And since they used rather simple drive trains they are usually restored and operational. So just run one on your layout, and if anyone makes a negative comment, just say, Hey, that's from the Rail Museum, they are doing a special Railfan charter run today.

     More comments on our choices of paint schemes can be found after the product listing table below.

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