Re: Sort of NG, Chasing late D&RGW with Volkswagens.

If you needed to work on the motor, two of us could pull it and hand carry it to the workbench. No need for an engine hoist!

In Michigan the key winter accessory was a credit card so you could keep scraping a corner of the windshield while driving. If there was any slight trace of warm air it came out of a duct at the lower left corner of the windshield so that is where you scraped. It was always helpful to have a co-pilot to do the scraping and wiping. Driving a VW beetle in the winter was like looking out the mouth of a cave as far as visibility was concerned. The upside of driving a beetle was you never got stuck!

I spent one summer at the School of Mines and one of the guys had a beetle. We found that it could go anywhere a jeep could go.

I rented beetles in Brazil and found out to never ever get an alcohol (alcool) version. It gave new meaning to the word under powered! Gas stations were closed on weekends in the 80's but we found we could manage a weekend of train chasing and still have enough gas to get to a gas station on Monday morning.

Michael Allen