Doodlebugs!

Back in 1999, MTH brought out a RailKing model of a Pennsylvania RR Doodlebug.  Even when steam was king, it was still expensive for steam trains to serve passengers on small branch lines and secondary mainlines.  One solution to high-cost, low-ridership routes that the railroads came up with was the Doodlebug or gas-electric car.  Doodlebugs were essentially a cross between a locomotive and a passenger car.  The front section housed an internal combustion engine and the rear housed a passenger or freight compartment.  Larger consists housed the baggage and freight in the rear compartment and pulled a passenger car behind the Doodlebug, but most were run as single units.  At their peak of popularity in the 1920s, Doodlebugs rode the rails in every part of the country.  In this True HD 1080p video, you can see the Doodlebugs (the front power unit and the rear follower unit) running on my layout.  It's still got the original Protosound (PS1) sound package, so it's under conventional transformer control and I have no plans to update it to the more modern PS2 sound and remote control package.  For its time, not a bad model at all!