If the terms “Rail Diesel Car” and “RDC” are used correctly, were all of them manufactured by Budd (or Budd licensee)?
Also, while researching, I bumped into some (very little) info about a spiffed-up kind of RDC that Budd came out with, apparently, 15 - 20 years after it introduced the RDC (1952??). The liner was called “SPV [something] Thousand.” Anything on that? - a. s.
The RDC (Rail Diesel Car) is a self-propelled rail passenger car built by the
Budd Company between 1949 and 1956. The Budd Company came out with an updated RDC during 1977, called the SPV-2000 (Self Propelled Vehicle). The design was based on an Amfleet shell, and powered by a pair of 360 hp diesels. While the RDC had only two powered axels, all 4 axels on the SPV-2000 were powered. The prototype began testing in Pennsylvania on December 8, 1977, which had one end fitted with a fiberglass nose cone. The state of Connecticut placed the first order on October 17, 1978. A car was ordered for the Danbury branch, while the other 12 were for lease to Amtrak, to replace their RDCs between New Haven and Springfield, MA. ConnDOT 50 entered service on April 23, 1980. The Unions demanded the 50 operate with a fireman, which caused ConnDOT to depower one axel on each end. Amtrak
988-999 suffered repeated road failures during 1980, and were returned to Budd for dozens of modifications. The last 10 SPV’s were built during 1981 for Metro-North, numbered 290-299.
Several foreign countries operated Rail Diesel Cars such as Brazil and Cuba. But all were built by Budd except those in Australia built under license. Those Australian Rail Diesel cars were the only ones built without the easily recognizable rooftop hump.
Longest RDC run in US was Oakland to Salt Lake City on the WP Zephyrettes. Next longest run was the PGE later BCR between North Vancouver and Prince George in western Canada. Personally fortunate enough to ride both before they were discontinued.
I had the misfortune to sometimes depend on the Budd SPV-20000 during my rail commuting days in Connecticut, and I will tell you it was the most abysmally mis-engineered piece of equipment to ride on rails in modern times. The frequency of breakdowns was utterly intolerable. The machine was pure and simply a horror, and whatever curse could be visited upon the Budd company for the SPV is richly deserved.
Thanks for the interesting history!
Was your commutation via SPV2000 by any chance in the very late Sixties / early-mid Seventies? It seems to me that it was the era so many things broke down, esp. production of quality vehicles. - a.s.
Wan’t all Busdd’s fault. (Maybe mostly, but not all.) Remember those were the days when FL-9\s couldn’t get proper changeover to straight electric and smoked up GCT with diesel fumes. Too much cut-back on maintenance didn’t help/
The same went with the C636. They were good haulers, but they had so many things that went broke too often or screwed up.
You sure know your stuff! I keep meaning to add, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia bought RDC’s in about 1952. According to a story we read in high school, Faisal wanted a passenger RR. Some agency of the USA (Corps of Engineers??) decided a two-lane blacktop would be better. [Here’s the thrilling part]: Basically Faisal told them to [censored] off and paid for his own RR line with his own oil money. I remember also that blowing sand was a big trouble getting into the RDC engines (motors??) since much if not most of the line ran thru “empty quarter” desert. The solution? Both sides of the ROW were coated with crude oil; sorry I don’t remember how many feet wide.
Was this the same Faisal whose car horn was supposedly modified to sound like dogs being mangled underfoot? Or his son? The story we read in school nearly forty years ago showed Aramco and the Sheik in a highly positive light. This was pre-OPEC; I didn’t hear about the “dog horn” until later and am not at all sure if it is true. - a.s.
No, a decade later. I commuted 1981-1984. That was the era when Metro North was created — as of 1/1/83 — to take over the old Conrail Metropolitan region. Within a year MNR had quite markedly improved the reliability of the operation, but they could not improve the reliability of those damned SPVs and finally gave up (to their credit!) You can’t do much to deal with fundamentally poor engineering.
As I think back on that, we had no right to expect any better from Budd. After all, the SPV was a blood descendant of the electric MU Metroliner cars which also had a horrible reliability record. Every run had to have a repair technician on board whose services were often needed!!
You are part right and part wrong. From '81 to '83 you still had Conrail maintenance on the things, and Conrail’s priorities were definitely elsewhere. But they were badly engineered, and the decision to remove power from two axles did not help at all, since this doubled the strain on the weakest part of the system, the mechanical transmission.
Interesting that some of the original Budd RDC’s are still inoperation after almost sixty years, usually with Caterpillar or some other manufacturer replacing the oridignal two diesel underfloor engines. The original RDC was a sucess. Intead of buying the new Seldom Propelled Vehicles (as they came to be called) the two states, NY and CT, should have put the equivalent money into rebuilding the RDC’s they already owned. They might still be running today! As late as 1980, I rode one on the Metro North N. Brewster - Dover Plains round trip, worked fine!
In Australia there were a number of Budd Cars.
The Commonwealth Railways obtained three Budd built RDC-1s in 1951 and these lasted until the late 1980s. One is in the National Railway Museum in Adelaide, South Australia.
The second group of Budd cars were the Commonwealth Engineering built SRC (Small Rail Car?) for the narrow gauge (3’6") Queensland Railways. These were about 50 feet long, double ended, with curved sides and twin AEC 125 HP engines. There was one all passenger SRC-1 (No 1900) and one baggage combination SRC-2 (No 1901). Only the two prototypes were built, since an even lighter single engined railcar, (stainless, but not Budd Licence) known as the “2000 class” was built in numbers (also by Commonwealth Engineering) instead. These 1900 class cars had twin radiators at each end of the roof (one for each engine) which appear to be cooled only by convection, hence, no radiator “hump”.
There was a third group of five cars built for the NSW Railways. These were scaled down RDC-1s in appearance, 77 feet long rather than 85 feet and only 14 feet high over the “hump”. Four units were standard cars with twin Detroit 6/110s driving through Allison torque converter transmissions. The fifth was a trailer car (fitted with an underfloor diesel generator for a buffet galley). These all had the normal Budd radiator hump, although the trailer car had a shorter hump than the power cars. These were used on the NSW South Coast line to Wollongong and Nowra as a single train of four or five cars. They were cut up in the mid 1990s after running as hauled cars for about ten years.
There were two groups of cars easily confused with Budd cars were the South Australian “Bluebirds”, painted blue with staniless sheat
Interesting, if true. I rather suspect that it isn’t.
Japan was running DMUs (Diesel Multiple Units) for years before Budd built its first RDC, and has continued to develop the breed. I rather doubt that they were paying Budd anything for their home-grown designs, none of which had (or currently have) the vista dome that isn’t.
Chuck
Well, at least most of the surviving RDC’s from the Fifties (and later) will probably make it into museums eventually. I can’t say the same of doodlebugs from the thirties. - a.s.
I was reading up on RDCs on Wiki a couple days ago and found that Toronto is considdering using them for their Blue22 project to build dedicated commuter rail from Toronto Union Station to Toronto Pearson Airport.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue22
Apparently you can’t keep a good design like the original RDC down.
Cheers!
~METRO
If you want to haul people from one place to another on a non-electrified line, they could do a lot worse with RDC’s. I must wonder about the labor (labour?) though. If an LRT ran every fifteen minutes it would need one driver. If an RDC leaves every five minutes it would need three drivers over the same period of time.
I wonder if they have considered diesel-electric light rail?
Al, you’ve lost me here: why would the RDC leave every 5 minutes? [%-)] The same three drivers would be needed if the LRT ran every 5 minutes. Either way, every 15 minutes is only one driver, LRT or RDC. [swg]
Wayne
I was probably over-optimistic. Let’s say we have approximately fifty people over the course of five-to-ten minutes filing into an RDC waiting at the terminal stub, enough to fill the RDC a couple of times over in the space of fifteen-to-twenty minutes. Of course, the RDC’s could be adjusted for the most efficient ratio of load factor to labor by sending out two of them conjoined every ten to fifteen minutes.
But since an LRT holds about twice as many passengers as one RDC, why not just run a diesel-electric LRT every fifteen to twenty minutes? I rode one between Camden, NJ and Trenton, and it was a wonderful experience. A very “dignified” diesel-electric engine filled the middle “accordion” of the train. Great acceleration and ride, with only a faint whine coming from the motors under acceleration. One LRT may cost more than two or three vintage RDC’s, but who would want to take the chance with antiquated equipment over a high-intensity route that GO and VIA are hoping will wean Torontonians and suburbanites away from their cars for the airport trip?
You are quibling about semantics. The diesel light rail cars on the NJT River Line are really the modern version of the RDC. Just missing train doors on the ends and a different operator configuration to accomodate them.
Indeed, I remember my breakfast at MIT’s Walker Memorial (as a Freshman) when a headline on one of the local papers caused me to buy it at the cafeteria check-out counter. This was about November or December 1949. The headline read:
“NEW INTERURBAN CAR DEBUTES ON THE BOSTON AND ALBANY”
And right below the headline was a picture of the first RDC-1 in regular service, on the New York Central’s Boston and Albany, I think replacing a local round trip between Boston and Albany. On a subsequent trip from Detroit to Boston (end of the winter break), I exited the New England States or the Boston seciton of the Woverine at Worcester and boarded the car for my first RDC ride into Boston.
If an RDC had the same seats to standees ratio as the River Line light rail cars, the two passenger capacities would be a lot closer. With commuter seating, even 2 and 2, an RDC can seat about 72, and that is about equivalent to a River Line DLRV.
In additon to building the River Line cars, the Swiss Stadler firm has built similar cars but with FRA cruch-protection requirements, for at least two USA and Canadian commuter railroad authorities. No double-decker yet, however. Go to Colorado Railcar for that.
I have followed the transit and commuter reporting for years, and never, ever, saw any problems with any Stadler rail equipment. I do not believe any other self-propelled railcar manufacturer can live up to that reputation.
If anyone want personal correspondance, I am forced to reveal my personal email address:
because my attempts to reply to meesages received via the Forum’s mail serv
[quote user=“daveklepper”]
You are quibling about semantics. The diesel light rail cars on the NJT River Line are really the modern version of the RDC. Just missing train doors on the ends and a different operator configuration to accomodate them.
Indeed, I remember my breakfast at MIT’s Walker Memorial (as a Freshman) when a headline on one of the local papers caused me to buy it at the cafeteria check-out counter. This was about November or December 1949. The headline read:
“NEW INTERURBAN CAR DEBUTES ON THE BOSTON AND ALBANY”
And right below the headline was a picture of the first RDC-1 in regular service, on the New York Central’s Boston and Albany, I think replacing a local round trip between Boston and Albany. On a subsequent trip from Detroit to Boston (end of the winter break), I exited the New England States or the Boston seciton of the Woverine at Worcester and boarded the car for my first RDC ride into Boston.
If an RDC had the same seats to standees ratio as the River Line light rail cars, the two passenger capacities would be a lot closer. With commuter seating, even 2 and 2, an RDC can seat about 72, and that is about equivalent to a River Line DLRV.
In additon to building the River Line cars, the Swiss Stadler firm has built similar cars but with FRA cruch-protection requirements, for at least two USA and Canadian commuter railroad authorities. No double-decker yet, however. Go to Colorado Railcar for that.
I have followed the transit and commuter reporting for years, and never, ever, saw any problems with any Stadler rail equipment. I do not believe any other self-propelled railcar manufacturer can live up to that reputation.
If anyone want personal correspondance, I am forced to reveal my personal email address:
because my attempts to reply to meesages received vi
