The machinist’s machine

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What would you drive as a train machinist and engineer in the 1910s to and from your work? Not just any car if you were Anton Frank Sternad of Chicago, USA.

The Cross Country Locomotive

The ‘trackless train’ he built and in which he was pictured here in 1917, took four years to make using a chassis of his own design mated to a 40hp four-cylinder Rutenber petrol engine that was said to be capable of 60mph. Sternad supposedly used some 500lb of aluminium in its construction and spent around $10,000 on it. Apart from the looks it also had some interesting features among these a hinged door in the cabin’s roof and ... air brakes, operated by compressing the air through drive rods on the rear wheels up to 125lb in the dome tank behind the cab. This compressed air was also used to inflate the tyres and — naturally — blow the whistle. Apart from that, the rods certainly did add to the locomotive’s appearance.

The vehicle was given the nickname 'Andy's Little Buzz Wagon' by Sternad’s wife, but the constructor himself preferred to call it ‘The Cross Country Locomotive’, especially after he took it on a number of trips throughout the US, first from Chicago to Des Moines, Iowa in 1921, then from Chicago to New York and, finally, from Chicago to Los Angeles in the mid 1920s. What happened to it afterwards remains a mystery.

Words Jeroen Booij. Pictures British Pathé, Coachbuilt.com.

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