Hearing tell of a steering wheel-free Volkswagen bus reminds us of the original 2017 ID Buzz concept and the autonomous future it portended. The steering wheel-less Klv-20, however, doesn't hail from the future, but from the past ... 70 years ago, to be exact. Converted into what must certainly be one of the most timelessly stylish rail cars in history, the Klv-20 is all original T1 bus up high, all train car down low. It's a very different way to take a Volkswagen Microbus trip.
VW Commercial Vehicles' Classic department has a way of unearthing vintage VW one-off vans that feel completely imagined but actually existed here in the real world. Two years ago, it showed a 1962 Type 2 Splittie turned quad-axle snow-and-mud machine called the Half-track Fox. This year, the company went a few years farther back to revive and reveal a 1955 Klv-20.
The Klv-20 was developed in 1954 to serve as a work vehicle for Germany's federal railway, Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB). The railway needed compact service vehicles, and to streamline the development process, it commissioned a Volkswagen Transporter rail car instead of designing a new vehicle from the ground up. Two different German manufacturers built 30 Transporter cars over the course of the next year: Rosenheim-based Martin Beilhack and Donauwörth-based Waggon & Maschinenbau GmbH.
Each Klv-20 car combined a T1 Kombi van body, 28-hp Volkswagen industrial engine, and rail chassis and running gear. A hydraulic lift-turning mechanism allowed the car to be lifted up, turned around 180 degrees and positioned back on the tracks by a single person so the car could be sent back to its origin without having to drive in reverse gear.
As you can tell from the photos, the T1's iconic round headlights were removed and blanked out, as were its taillights. To further meet rail regulations, two white front lights were installed higher up next to the split windshield, a single round red light added at the rear. We like how the metal-trimmed rounds and body-colored housings of the restored model, vehicle number 20-5011, match the aesthetic of the T1 itself.
The model procured and showcased by VW Classics was built by Beilhack and worked out of DB's Plattling/Bavaria rail and signal maintenance depots. Like the Klv-20 Transporter rail car fleet at large, it was in service into the 1970s before being phased out.
According to a sales brochure Volkswagen received with the vehicle itself, the T1 car is powered by a four-stroke petrol boxer engine and four-speed manual transmission with reverse gear. Power to the 550-mm (23-in) steel rail wheels gets transmitted via a pair of lateral oscillating axles with joint bodies, and stopping power comes from a pedal-activated oil-hydraulic shoe brake system.
The body itself is attached to the steel chassis with rubber mountings and houses three upholstered benches with a total of seven seats. The two rear benches can be removed to make room for cargo.
Volkswagen put the Klv-20 back on the tracks this past spring, taking it on a scenic trip through the greenery of Lengenfeld under the Stein, a small village in Central Germany. Its multiple runs over the 244-m-long (800-ft) Lengenfeld Viaduct deliver a particularly dramatic effect in photographs and video.
Volkswagen presented the Klv-20 during its International VW Bus Day in June. It's now part of the automaker's classic vehicles collection in Hanover. You can see it make a very unique scenic tour in the minute-long clip below.
Source: VW Commercial Vehicles
