John Labbe’s “Fares Please!” book glosses over the Carver line somewhat, stating that passenger service was only ever provided by an old gasoline-powered bus that was fitted with flanged steel wheels to travel on the rails. The real history is longer, and far more interesting.

When service on the line initially began on December 8, 1915, the line ran from Carver through Clackamas and Milwaukie as far north as Ardenwald, where a connection with the PRL&P’s Cazadero line could be made. A connection could also be made at Milwaukie to the Oregon City line, though this necessitated a walk of almost half a mile. Without a real schedule, the trains stopped on request anywhere along the line. Service was provided by steam trains, which almost immediately provoked the ire of the Milwaukie City Council – their franchise required the use of electric cars.

By February 1916, the line had extended further north to Bybee Avenue in Eastmoreland. Service was still provided by steam trains, but it was rumored that a Ewbank gas-electric motor car might be used on the line starting in the summer.

The Ewbank motor car was designed by Portland inventor H. B. Ewbank, Jr. – a disciple of Thomas Edison – and utilized his invention of “electric transmission control” to convert power from an engine that used cheap distillate fuel into a usable electric current for locomotion. He trialled his one and only prototype motor car (No. 333) with a number of railroads in the Pacific Northwest in 1913 and 1914 – the Southern Pacific and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle being the most prominent – and promoted his work vigorously in a number of newspaper advertisements. Despite what seemed like promising results and general praise from those that saw the car in operation, none of the railroads committed to the technology.

Note: Newspaper articles of the time sometimes called this a “Ubank,” “Ewbanks,” “Eubank,” or “Eubanks” motor, even if they spelled Mr. Ewbank’s name correctly in the same article!

The Ewbank gas-electric motor car running trials on the Southern Pacific between Roseburg and Glendale, Oregon in August 1914. The car’s rear observation platform is closest to the camera.

On July 3, 1916 – almost a year-and-a-half after its last reported trial – the Ewbank motor car was placed in operation on the Carver line. It carried around 700 passengers into Carver for 4th of July celebrations, and continued running for about a month. [Speculation: perhaps the length of an agreed-upon trial period?] On August 10, 1916, the Oregon City Courier noted that the motor car was “in its old berth” in Portland and surmised that this meant it was no longer in use on the Carver line. Steam power was reinstated on the line.

Another gas motor car was used on the line starting on December 19, 1916, but was put aside in favor of the old steam cars in October 1917 – heavy wartime use of the line created extra traffic that needed more trains. By June 1918, the gas motor car was back in use, as the Oregon Public Service Commission issued a strong condemnation of the company’s practice of filling the fuel tanks of the car while passengers were aboard. However, by March 1919, steam locomotive power was once again in use, heading up two mixed trains daily in each direction from Carver to SE 22nd and Powell, the inner “end of the line” since June 1916.

On August 23, 1919, the line finally opened to its Portland terminus at SE 3rd and Hawthorne. As steam trains were not permitted on the line within Portland city limits for passenger service (steam freight trains could run at night), the company procured a new motor car “similar to the one in use on the Mt. Hood railway.” This would seem to be the gas rail-bus mentioned by Labbe, later to be known derisively as the “Galloping Goose.” Comparisons with the somewhat elegant rail-bus in use on the Mount Hood Railroad seem misplaced, however, as this was an ungainly Frankenstein’s monster of a vehicle: a beat-up old road bus awkwardly transplanted onto flanged steel wheels. At first, the rail-bus pulled a trailer car for extra passenger capacity.

The “Galloping Goose” in March 1922.

As the line began to fail, Mr. Carver gradually let all his other employees go. By March 1922, he was personally driving the odd “home-made auto bus” along the line to maintain his franchises, the only remaining member of staff. The City of Portland rescinded their franchise in August 1925, and the entire line was practically abandoned by 1926, although work on the extension across the Clackamas River to Viola continued.

In a way, Labbe is correct – the “Galloping Goose” was the only car to provide service into Portland proper along the entire length of the line, but there was more to the line’s history than just that short period.

As for the Ewbank car, legend has it that it was acquired by PRL&P and its chassis and trucks were used to build snowplow locomotive No. 1413. Streetcar historian Richard Thompson confirms that a 1955 inventory notes that No. 1413 did acquire its trucks from the Ewbank car when it was built by PEPCO in 1925, but there’s no record of the chassis being reused. There’s also a case to be made for the Ewbank car’s four GE-75 motors coming along with the trucks.