McKeen Motor Car Company Historical Society

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McKeen Motor Car Company Historical Society

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https://www.patreon.com/c/McKeenMotorCarCompanyHistoricalSociety
https://www.youtube.com/
https://www.gofundme.com/f/mckeencarcuyamaca
https://mckeencar.com/

08/31/2026

Here's a new photo we have not seen before of the Cuyamaca, here seen as Alaska Railroad #83, in Alaska. This was shortly before the car would be removed from the rails and laid on the ground in the Anchorage Railyard.

08/15/2026

Here's Santa Fe McKeen car M-100 or M-101, Identical Motor Cars and the only (2) 55 footers on the ATSF. Early photo with the original factory gold leaf seen on the car. This unique view is from an RPPC photo in my collection, and I want to say this feels like the Los Angeles area, before the cars were relegated to Kansas short lines.

07/24/2026

Southern Pacific Cut Railcars in Half, to make them longer.

Freshly Repainted Southern Pacific McKeen Motor Car #29, hauling Trailer Car #20, direct sister to the T-16 of which we have rescued from being scrapped, last year.

This photo was taken Pre-1917 as that was the year Southern Pacific tried to fix a big mistake. They owned over 20 of the 55 foot McKeen Cars and realized too late that the lack of a baggage compartment frustrated the passengers when they tried to bring something like a steamer trunk with them... as it would not fit through the 24" wide drop center doors.

Southern Pacific, stuck with these cars, did not consider cutting a baggage doorway into the existing 55 foot cars an option, instead, trailer cars were purchased to try to rectify the issue, and for 3 of these 55 footers, including #29, SP tried cutting the car in half to add a 15 foot baggage area... essentially making the cars 70 footers... the experiment to convert 3 of these cars may not have gone over well? Maybe it cost too much for quickly aging technology? I do not know, but S.P. did not continue this practice and ended up scrapping most 55 foot cars before ever converting them. I assume SP kept these cars around for a while as a source of parts...

The motor car shows no striping, and large aluminum lettering, so this car was repainted by S.P. A diagram for this specific paint scheme was drawn up February 17th, 1913. "Cherry in Japan" was the new body color, and appears to be similar to McKeen's color, but the trailer car appears to have an entirely different body color, despite lacking the factory striping... which suggests it was repainted as well.

Help Restore the McKeen Car "Cuyamaca" as when our car is restored, we will impersonate other McKeen cars that no longer exist, including the Southern Pacific McKeen Cars like #29. The Placerville & Sacramento Valley Railroad has invited us to operate at their Museum when our car is restored, as McKeen operated on that rail until 1939.

07/04/2026

Happy 250th Fourth of July!!!

06/29/2026

In researching the Pullman Company Photo archives, around the 6000th photo in the archive was the first Pullman photo of something other than a Pullman coach... The Experimental McKeen Lightweight Coach #499. This was built in 1907, and very likely woke up the rail coach industry to the idea of all steel construction. If I recall, the first Steel Pullman and St. Louis Car Company coaches would be built in the following 2 years after McKeen.

The entire framework of the ends of the car, the bolster, side sills, and end frame that reach to the couplers, were gigantic steel castings, 11 feet long, but 9'9" wide, and weighed 3700 lbs each, but due to the reduction in number of parts, McKeen felt this was an improvement in strength and weight, and complexity.

The Railcar could seat 78 passengers, and weighed 89,250 lbs. This gave a weight per passenger of 1145 lbs. This is claimed at the time to be better than any steel railcar at the time

One of the Major contributing factors to this weight savings, and a Major Innovation on the part of the McKeen Cars, is in the idea that the Center beam between kingpins does Nearly Nothing for the structure of the car, and is Only for inter-train forces.. The pushing and pulling between Couplers. All weight of the passengers and car body are transferred to the side sill and skin (as the car is Semi-Monocoque in Design) and the bolsters are designed to take that weight from the body and transfer that to the trucks. Again, the center beam does not explicitly handle the loading of the coach itself.

06/25/2026

The second Museum to send us a formal letter of Inviation is the Placerville & Sacramento Valley Railroad, a railline that had McKeen Motor Cars (under Southern Pacific control at the time.) Famously they had the last SP McKeen Car, #45, running trains until it was scrapped in 1939. They've even had a woman ride on the P&SVRR who recalled riding a McKeen Motor Car! Thank You Placerville & Sacramento Valley Railroad!

06/17/2026

St. Joseph & Grand Island #114 was built as McKeen Builder's Number 073, in 1910. It was almost 79,000 lbs which is on the heavy side for a McKeen Motor Car.

It burned, and was scrapped in 1912, photos attached. This is why photos are so uncommon of this car... it survived for only 2 years.

05/18/2026

From a Family Photo Album, here is a photo of the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway Motor Car #2, in front of the Hotel Cabrillo, which is now the West Wing of the La Valencia in La Jolla.

This photo was in a family photo album with no additonal information. Photo was likely taken closer to 1914, the car looks a little tired at this point.

05/13/2026

Does anyone recognize the location depicted on this General Electric Catalog?

05/11/2026

St. Joesph and Grand island McKeen Car #112, It was the 59th McKeen Car built, finished in Early 1910, It weighed 79,000 Lbs. It later became Union Pacific M-14, and Burned in Wreck in 11/1920.

It was built as a Parabolic Nose, 70 Foot, Baggage Passenger McKeen, with seating for 83 people, and a 8 foot 6" long Baggage Section.

This Real Photo Postcard was likely taken within a few years of construction as all the original paint and gold leaf show, along with the high gloss varnish that looks fresh.

We are restoring the second to last McKeen Motor Car in Existance! Please help out and follow the Restoration of the McKeen Car "Cuyamaca." The rendering below is a good match for what the colors of the #112 should have been based on all of our research.

https://www.youtube.com/

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Address

Ramona, CA
92065

Website

http://www.mckeencar.com/

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