AUTOCAR THE FIRST MODERN TRACTION
In the coming weeks, a long-lost but key vehicle in the history of railways worldwide will enter service for the first time in the heritage era – the North Eastern Railway Autocar.
Introduction
The Edwardian period came to be regarded as an age of significant changes in technology.
December 1902 saw the first radio signal transmitted from North America to Great Britain. The following year heralded the Ford Model A, the first car to be produced by Ford, in Detroit, and Orville Wright flew an aircraft with a petrol engine in the first documented and successful powered flight.
The petrol engine also featured in another significant, but less well known event. The NER introduced the world’s first electric railcar, powered by its own on board petrol engine. This fact was acknowledged earlier this year by Guinness World Records.
Known as an ‘autocar’, a term which has not survived the passage of time, the survivor was one of two built in 1903 by the NER. It took
