1959 Powered Railcar with Dome

Powered Railcar Has Dome for Sightseers

Self-powered, a new railcar built for the French National Railroad by Renault has a glass and plastic dome in the middle that gives its passengers an unobstructed view of the countryside.  The 58-ton car holds 88 passengers.  It has an 800-horsepower diesel engine that operates a generator, providing power for motors.

This appeared in the August 1959 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine 

1959 Should you buy a foreign car?

Have you considered buying a foreign car?  If  you are typical of millions of Americans, you have probably thought about it. And you are probably trying to decide whether it would be a wise choice.

At present about 10 percent of all the new cars sold are imported. Not very long ago, it was generally believed that imported cars would never go over 5 percent of the total sales.

What has caused this spectacular jump in sales? Is it a fad? Are the people who own imported cars happy with them?  

The imported economy car attracts a larger percentage of professional and highly trained people than domestic cars, but this may be due more to an interest in unusual engineering design than to snobbishness or any status-making reason.

This is a portion of the article that appeared in the August 1959 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine.

1959 Coin Operated Gas Pumps

Coin Operates Pump At Self-Service Gas Station

What next?  In Sweden, a new idea is a coin-operated fuel pump.  Such self-service pumps have been installed at many service stations and are made especially for motor scooters and other small vehicles.  The driver simply pulls his scooter alongside the pump, deposits one or more coins and helps himself to as large a quantity of petrol-and-oil mixture as he needs.

This was in the August 1959 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine

1959 Mini Locomotive delivers Mail

Paint, scraps and ingenuity converted box into locomotive

"Locomotive" chugs up Wire to deliver Mail

Mail is delivered to Morton Murphy's front door by private locomotive.  Murphy's home, in Brown County, Ind., is 200 feet from the road, and a trip to the mailbox takes him across some rugged terrain.  Murphy redesigned his mailbox into a miniature locomotive, complete with cab, cowcatcher and headlight (a Christmas tree bulb).  The "track" is a wire strung at waist level between the house and the road.  the mailbox hangs from it on pulleys.  A small electric motor attached to the flywheel of an old sewing machine provides its power, winding up a line attached to the locomotive.  Murphy flips a switch, and the mail chugs up to the house.

"Station" is convenient height

Electric motor belted to the flywheel of an old sewing machine winds up a line to pull locomotive up the track.



This article appeared in the June 1959 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine