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KITBASHING A DOODLEBUG
 The term Doodlebug was a nickname given to a class of self-propelled cars that operated on American railways mostly in the 1920s through 1940s, though some ran into the 1950s. While never overwhelmingly popular or plentiful, Doodlebugs did fill a niche in providing passenger and less-than-carload (LCL) freight service on lightly traveled lines and were a familiar sight in their time. They often pulled one or two coaches, but could be used alone as well. Most Doodlebugs were combination passenger and freight in body type, but some were all baggage/mail while others were strictly passenger.
Doodlebugs were built by a number of car builders, including General Electric, General Motors (EMC division), Pullman-Standard, St. Louis Car, and Brill. Most Doodlebugs were built in small orders (1 or 2) and were customized to meet the customer's needs. Thus there was a high degree of individuality throughout the genre.
There were three general types: gas-mechanical, gas-electric, and diesel-electric. For our kitbash purposes, the latter two are of interest. Both use an internal combustion engine to drive a generator which provides DC electricity for the car's traction motors. The difference is in the fuel used - gasoline or diesel oil.
Among the railroads that operated Doodlebugs were the Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Burlington, Milwaukee, Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, New York Central, New Haven, and Erie. You can find out more about Doodlebugs and view pictures of them at the North East Rails site. The Santa Fe usage was of particular interest to me since my intention was to use the Doodlebug on Steve Green's US Desert Freight route. The BVE train I intend to use for the kitbash is Kamo's Kiha 40 series car available from the Kawasaki Residents site.
From descriptions I've read, Doodlebugs were noisy and accelerated slowly. The motors throbbed during acceleration and vibrations were felt throughout the car. I suspect these qualities were more acute in the originals than they are in the Kiha 40, but in my mind the Kiha 40 serves just right. It accelerates slowly and makes quite a lot of fuss in the process.
Getting started
Kitbashing a Doodlebug for BVE is quite easy. But first let me point out a few caveats. One, I have never ridden on a Doodlebug. I haven't even seen one in person. Two, I want to note that reusing/modifying someone else's work is fine if it's for your own use. Distribution of the final product without permission from those whose works you have reused (completely or partly) is a violation of copyright laws. That said, let's get on with it.
Kitbash
The kitbash requires six things: 1) make a new train folder, 2) modify the control panel, 3) use a more American-like horn, 4) move the driver position to the right side of the cab, 5) find a suitable train bitmap, and 6) modify the train text. If you want to use the Doodlebug regularly as part of a specific route, you may want to copy that route to a new name and make some modifications, as described later.
Make a new train folder. Copy the Kiha40_gonou folder and save it as Doodlebug (or some other name, if you prefer). Make all your train changes in this new folder.
Modify the control panel. This is the most difficult task. Since I have no information as to what a Doodlebug control panel looked like - if indeed it had something resembling a control panel - I chose to re-use the one that comes with the Kiha 40. Thus I merely needed to remove the placards bearing Japanese characters from the PANEL.BMP. I used MS Paint as follows:
- Open the PANEL.BMP in MS Paint.
- Zoom in (enlarge) the view.
- Use the eye dropper tool to select a color from the surrounding area. I found a dull green over on the right to be suitable.
- With color selected, use the paintbrush tool to replace the entire upper portion of the panel, which contains the placards. If you make a mistake, click the right mouse button while the left mouse button is still pressed, or select Undo from the Edit menu.
- Save your work.
 This is a view from the Doodlbug cockpit. Note the placards have been removed and the driver position is now on the right (instructions follow).
Provide an American-like horn. The Erie doodlebugs have been described as having a two-chime horn. I deemed the horn in Steve Green's GP38 to be suitable, so I simply copied the Klaxon.wav and Klaxon1.wav files from the GP38 folder over the same files in the Doodlebug folder. Note that the Kiha 40 uses a file named Klaxon0.wav in place of the Klaxon.wav. It appears that BVE interprets both in the same manner. Thus I suspect it would be a good idea not to have both in the same folder. To retain the older files for posterity (optional), put an x in front of the name (e.g., xKlaxon1.wav).
When running the train, the Klaxon (long horn blast) is initiated by pressing the Enter key. Kaxon1 (short horn blast) is initiated by pressing the Shift-Enter key combination.
Adjust driver position. Modify the driver position by way of the train.dat file.
- Open the train.dat file in Notepad or WordPad.
- Locate the *Cockpit line.
- Change the line below *Cockpit from -750 to 750. Do not attempt to add a comment via the semicolon character. The semicolon causes the entire line to be ignored by the processor and BVE will return an error message when run.
- Save the file.
In case you're wondering, the cockpit section contains three lines in required order. Each line positions the driver along an axis that places zero at track center, track level, and cab front. Dimensions are in millimeters. The first line is the X (lateral) axis. Positive is right, negative is left. The second line is the Y (vertical) axis. Positive is up, negative is down. The third line is the Z (forward-back) axis. Positive is ahead, negative is back.
Find a suitable train picture. You can find Doodlebug photos at the North East Rails site. I chose one of the Santa Fe photos, since this would be the most suitable for use on the US Desert Freight route. Remember, these photos belong to someone else and should not be distributed without permission.
Reduce and proportion the image to a 4:3 aspect ratio, minimum size 160x120 pixels (this requires a paint program such as PhotoShop LE or Paint Shop Pro) and save it as a bitmap (BMP). Name the file train.bmp, replacing the existing file by that name. Reducing the bitmap size is not mandatory, but it helps reduce the BVE processing requirements
Modify train text. The Train.txt file displays in the train data window when you select the route. You can't use the semicolon as a way to add comments, so you have to either remove any unwanted material or move it way down (by adding returns) so it doesn't display without scrolling. Then add at the top of the file any text you would like to have displayed (e.g., Doodlebug - modification by yourname 2001).
Using the Doodlebug
To use the Doodlebug you need to place the Doodlebug folder inside the Train folder and call the Doodlebug folder from within the route over which you want the Doodlebug to operate.
Make a copy of the route file and rename it (e.g., US Desert Freight DB or Doodlebug) retaining the original RW or CSV extension. Then modify the file as follows:
For RW type route files.
- Open the route file by way of Notepad or WordPad.
- Locate the line File=xxx, where xxx is the train folder.
- Replace the xxx (train folder name) with Doodlebug. If you want to identify the line as being inserted by you, follow Doodlebug with a semicolon and any note you like (do not use commas). You can also keep the original line, if you like, by preceding it with a semicolon and inserting the File=Doodlebug line. The semicolon indicates that everything following it on the line is a comment and is therefore not processed by BVE. Be careful not to interrupt a line with a carriage return.
- Modify the text at the top of the file to identify its new use as a passenger run. (Example, US Southwest Desert Passenger Route.)
For CSV type route files.
- Open the route file by way of Notepad or WordPad.
- Locate the line Train.Folder xxx, where xxx is the train folder.
- Replace the xxx (train folder name) with Doodlebug. If you want to identify the line as being inserted by you, follow Doodlebug with a semicolon and any note you like (do not use commas). You can also keep the original line, if you like, by preceding it with a semicolon and inserting the Train.Folder Doodlebug line. The semicolon indicates that everything following it on the line is a comment and is therefore not processed by BVE. Be careful not to interrupt a line with a carriage return.
- Modify the text at the top of the file to identify its new use as a passenger run. (Example, US Southwest Desert Passenger Route.)
Dedicating a Desert Freight route to the Doodlebug
If you find you want to keep a version of the US Desert Freight route for dedicated use by the Doodlebug, you may want to consider repositioning the required stopping points at the stations. The route was laid out with station platforms that vary in length from 300 meters to 400 meters. A three-car Doodlebug train would be only 70-80 meters long. Thus it is not necessary to use the full platform length for the train.
I made the following changes to the route file in order to have the Doodlebug stop in positions closer to the platform centers:
For the Checketts Bank station, I put a semicolon in front of the 14385@stop(1) line to make it a comment. I then created a new stop point with the following line and inserted it in the appropriate place:
14250@stop(1) ; for Doodlebug
Similarly, I commented out the @stop commands at 29140 for Brownhills Junction and 54690 for Carlsburg. I then created new stop points with the following lines and inserted them in the appropriate places:
29025@stop(1) ; for Doodlebug
54525@stop(1) ; for Doodlebug
Variation for the original US Desert Freight route
Incidentally, the original GP38 ore train that normally runs on the US Desert Freight route has only two scheduled intermediate stops. You can remove the mandatory nature of a stop by changing the first Arrival Time parameter (the one right after the station name) in the @Station statement to L. The station will still appear on the timetable, and retain the scheduled departure as a way of giving you something to check, but you will not cause the smiley/scowly face to turn red with anger when you roll through the station. Stopping becomes optional.
Alfred Barten, 17 November 2001
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