Nostalgia & History > Mowing Time Is Coming

Upkpfan here on TO's recently reminded me in one of his postings where he mentioned a railroad weed mower.  It brought to mind in Aug. 1961 when the Rock Island was still using their Fairmont M5 Series A mower that I captured a couple photos of as it was resting at a grade crossing west of Cullison, KS on the Golden State line along with its motorcar that pulled it.

A Fairmont Railway Motors advertisement in the 8th edition of the Railway Track & Structures Cyclopedia (1955 Simmons - Boardman publication) indicated it as "providing fast, efficient cutting at minimum cost.  An automatic cutter bar release, heavy-duty sickles and rugged, clutch-equipped engines & headlight its outstanding performance characteristics".  From what I could tell, this Rock Island #WM6 mower lacked the headlight, but with a magnifier, I just now find the engine that's located forward and above the left-front wheel.  On the righthand side I find another engine/transmission platform for the right-hand sickle but with no power unit, so assume there was a mechanical difficulty that brought things to a halt here.  The fuel tank attached at the top-front of the mower frame has two sediment bowls and lines, one leading to the leftside engine and the righthand line being suspended from the upper frame.  This leading me to believe trouble had previously arrived.  

As for the aforementioned headlight, I can't imagine anyone using one of these mowers at night unless they were asking for lots of sickle repairing/sharpening.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/15 13:15 by rrman6.

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My Dad, when he was working as a section laborer on the RI, would bid these machines
in during the summer months as they were a higher rate of pay.  I can vaguely remember
sitting on a mower while my Dad was putting it in the clear for the weekend.  It was
somewhere in Iowa, but I have no idea where.
zr190

Carl,
That one is different than the one in NE at the depot. upkpfan

Marv,
Fairmont also had a unit that had only one sickle bar but I'd think the two bar type would be more productive, not requiring a second pass for the opposite side of roadway.  Do you recall if the CB&Q unit in Nebraska was such?
Carl

Carl,
The one in NE. don't look like the pic. that you have. upkpfan