NZR RM class (Leyland petrol)

The Leyland experimental petrol railcar was a unique railcar built and trialled in New Zealand in 1925. It should not be confused with the two much smaller Leyland diesel railbuses of 1936.
New Zealand's experimentation with railcars began in 1912 with the use of a MacEwan-Pratt petrol railcar. The New Zealand Railways Department (NZR), which ran the national rail network, was looking for ways to run rural passenger services with as little expense as possible, but at the same time presenting an attractive form of transport to passengers. Many rural branch lines at the time ran "mixed" trains that carried both passengers and freight and were not particularly popular due to the slow schedule that resulted from loading and unloading goods during the journey. NZR saw the use of railcars as a potential means of providing cheap and efficient rural passenger travel, and as railcar technology was not very well developed at the time, engineers experimented with new ideas and various...