Since the K&DR’s acquisition of 3 Fairmont MT14 Speeder cars back in 1997, these vehicles haven’t been used much. In 2010, they were subject to a restoration programme by some of our volunteers, a couple of whom have since left. At least 1 of these cars entered service again in 2015, however they have not been used for some time and require further restoration due to deterioration.
The restoration programme resumed roughly around August 2025 with attention from some of our volunteers. Since then, one Speeder (Car 3) is in working condition, requiring further finishing touches and tweaking, while the remaining two are not working and still require extensive restoration work. It is our intention to get all 3 back into service.
Recently, we have been focusing our restoration efforts on our CNRail 144-55 Speeder car (shown in Image 1). Before the start of March, we mounted and connected the fuel tank, added an inline fuel filter, the throttle and choke are both connected to the engine, and in theory the engine would start up. We’ve checked the wiring is where it should be and we can try to start up the engine at some point, however we need to remove the Speeder from the cabin that it is currently in.
Image 2 was taken on the 3rd of March – we found the original cover for the centre console controls, and as you can see, it looks great! We also found the seats on the same day and installed those, as it makes for a much more comfortable ride! We can’t find any of the original round handles for the gear levers (on the left of the controls), so one of our younger volunteers is designing and making them on their 3D printer. We still have wiring to sort out before we put the Speeder back into service, but the wiring we need to look at isn’t critical to the operation of the Speeder (e.g. lights, horns. We do need them to be functional to take it on our line, but the engine will start without them).