Budd RDCs

Here’s a documentary film from 1952 about Budd’s Rail Diesel Cars. I remember seeing the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines RDCs at Wildwood, New Jersey, when I was a child on vacation with my family. Later, during high school, when I lived in Newton, Massachusetts, I rode the Boston & Albany (as the locals insisted on calling the New York Central) from the Newtonville station into Boston to explore the city. The RDCs had a distinctive “voice,” a sound I still hear clearly in my auditory memory. They were also very comfortable to ride compared to most of the commuter coaches of the era. The suburban trains on the B & A were old coaches and the RDCs held the off rush hour timetables. This movie, like many industrial documentaries of the 50s, doesn’t get around to its subject until three and a half minutes into the film but it’s worth the wait. You’ll see the RDCs in operation on every railroad that owned them, I think.

Sleeping Car

When I rode Trains 645 and 638 with my Uncle he always found an empty roomette for me in the ten roomette six bedroom sleeping car out of New York and Roanoke respectively.  Unfortunately for the future of  travel on this route, the sleepers were seldom full.

In retrospect, I wish I had recorded names and car numbers on each trip.  But I do remember with vivid certainty that one of the sleepers I rode was named Randolph Macon College.  The post war sleeping cars built for the N & W by the Budd Company were named for colleges and universities in the railroad’s territory.  These cars didn’t feature the shot-welded louvers of the streamlined cars Budd built for many railroads in the post war period.  They were known as slab-sided cars, at least among rail fans if not the car builders.  They were quiet to ride and I loved that special aroma of clean upholstery and fresh air circulating through the ventilation system.  N & W also had some 10-6 Pullman-built sleeping cars that probably graced these trains and I assume many runs featured a 10-6 sleeper from the Pennsy.  This appears to be the builder’s photo of this car.  However, as I give this photo a closer look I see what looks like one of N & W’s Pullman-built coaches to the right and behind the sleeper.  Perhaps this photo was made at Roanoke given the curved track in the foreground that suggests the station’s track layout.  I welcome your opinion.