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[CBQ] Re: Besler Steam Airplane

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Subject: [CBQ] Re: Besler Steam Airplane
From: dennyanspach <danspach@macnexus.org>
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:16:11 -0800
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The Besler steam car seen in the video referenced by Charlie Vlk was 
demonstrating on the DRI&NW RR, the line jointly owned by the CB&Q and the 
CMSTPP. It was the prototype for a moderately successful  two car steam train 
that Besler (with Budd's help) subsequently supplied to the NYNH&H RR in about 
1937. 

 The video referenced clearly shows the Davenport Union Station and the 
Davenport Locomotive Works.  The car body itself was the first stainless steel 
car built by the Budd Company. It was commonly referred to as the Green Hornet, 
and prior to being shipped to Davenport, was sitting on a back lot bereft of 
any motive power (READING). The car was lent by Edward G. Budd  because of an 
ongoing personal relationship with William George Besler . (then Chmn. of the 
Board of the CRR of NJ and President of Davenport Locomotive Works). However, 
W.G.'s sons, George and William Besler, were the steam cars' inventors and 
promoters, and it was apparently under their own separate corporate name,  
Besler Systems,  that steam car production and testing was undertaken.

Note that W.G. Besler, an Illinois native,  had once been a CB&Q Division 
Superintendent at Galesburg, if I can recall.  I attribute this earlier 
relationship as the reason why the DRI&NW RR was willing to be so accommodating.

The Besler steam power truck was of the reciprocating compound type designed to 
be installed within and under a standard passenger car body.  The rods were 
enclosed by shields so that to the casual observer they looked like standard 
car trucks. The boiler was of the very high pressure scotch type and was 
enclosed within  the car body, an issue that subsequently caused no end of 
union-generated  safety complaints during its service life on the New Haven 
(1937-43).

The Besler steam car operation  out of Davenport (only one trip as far as I 
know) was the only instance that I know of of a streamlined railroad steam car- 
and a stainless steel one at that.  

However,  by pure serendipity, the only OTHER steam car operation in the US at 
the time was only 80 some miles away at Cedar Rapids where the Milwaukee Road's 
 Cedar Rapids-Kansas City "Iowa Section" of the the Southwest Limited was 
handled daily Cedar Rapids-Ottumwa with a steam Locomotor, a similar-concept 
steam car which was powered by a uniflow (i.e. not external reciprocating) 
motor (essentially a standard internal combustion block -International 
Harvester in this instance- powered instead by high pressure steam entering 
through the nominal "exhaust" valves and then exiting through the "intake" 
valves). Like the Besler, the boiler was also of the high pressure Scotch type. 

  They also purchased the patents of the Doble Steam Motors Company of 
Emeryville, CA, the maker of probably the finest steam automobiles ever built, 
and then occupied Doble's building (reportedly still standing). Although, I do 
not know this for certain, I believe that the scotch boilers for all the Besler 
productions, steam airplane, Green Hornet, and the New Haven train were in fact 
designed and constructed by Besler/Doble, or under their supervision. The 
Beslers also flew the only steam-powered plane in about 1932 in Oakland, CA, 
using a uniflow power plant and undoubtedly Doble technology.

For years during the 1930's George Besler drove a Doble steam automobile, 
particularly when he was making public appearances, sales and promotional 
calls.  I personally have ridden in a preserved Doble steam car at 106 mph. 
Awesome is a wimpy term.

Beyond the Green Hornet (the car body was returned to Budd sans steam motor), 
and the New Haven's train, neither Besler nor Davenport produced any more steam 
rail cars.  George (from his Oakland, CA office) made a proposal to the Sierra 
RR to steam power a McKeen car (drawings in the California State RR Museum 
archives), and he also made a proposal to the Southern Pacific RR in 1937 to 
supply two Besler-powered locomotives (A-A, two power trucks each) to power the 
new DAYLIGHT. How the SP responded to this bid has yet to be uncovered.

More than you want to know, but a totally interesting vignette of a forgotten, 
and eventually failed technology, in which the CB&Q played a peripheral but 
important part. BTW, the original video (available from the New Haven RR Hist. 
Soc.) also records the first test runs of the Besler New Haven train ex-Budd 
Philadelphia plant on the Reading in 1936 or 7. In the background can be seen 
the car bodies of one of the first ZEPHYRS. 

 The old carbon steel car bodies supplied by New Haven that made up the New 
Haven train were to my knowledge the only non-stainless cars ever rebuilt by 
Budd.

More than you want to know-

Denny



 
Denny S.  Anspach MD
Sacramento







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