May Photo Worth A Thousand Words

This inglorious beast is recognizable to most railfans as a "Budd Car", otherwise known as a Rail Diesel Car or "RDC". This particular one is found on the Bellefonte Historical Railroad in Bellefonte, PA. I chose it for being of New Haven Railroad orgin and the fact that this was a recent picture from the Altoona trip last April on which I've already written a post.

The "RDC" has been and still can be described by experts at great length. They were designed to replace locomotive pulled trains on light density lines where such economies were needed. Each car was an independently powered unit which could be added to other units to form a longer train. Interestingly, though RDC's were often powerful enough to pull another unpowered car on many lines this could not be done without serious repercussions from the Budd Company. It affected the warranty, and of course they could sell more RDC's as a result.

The New Haven Railroad and the Boston and Maine Railroad were two northeastern railroads with massive webs of passenger routes throughout New England. This meant that they were also saddled with massive revenue problems when passenger service could no longer pay the bills. The RDC bought these two roads some time. Time to reduce costs to see if they could maintain service profitably, and later, as the cars deteriorated, time to drive off those stubborn customers who still used trains to get to work or travel between cities. These two lines were not the only railroads to buy these once popular cars, but they were the top users.

Boston and Maine bought more than anyone and the later MBTA kept them around even when the engines could no longer propel the cars. Several cars had to be hauled around by a locomotive. Later, many of those cars were de-motored and turned into regular cars. For years the B&M fleet suffered on in various states of decline, long after other roads replaced them. Many of New Haven's Budd Cars went into Amtrak service or suffered under Penn Central. The example above still has many of it's New Haven options including the oval number board, the recessed headlights and, out of sight, solid plates on the sides for logos and reporting marks.

Now, I noticed that the logo on the car was missing. Below, I had to include another shot from a 2005 expedition to show that much. The blue color and logo is very reminiscent of the B&M McGuiness style logo. Their other car is a later Reading car, which is different in the details I mentioned. Neither is former B&M.

By the way, the town of Bellefonte is a worthwhile detour on your way to Altoona. Paul Lodge and his wife enjoyed the gardens around the depot and the local architecture is pretty neat. I've never been able to coordinate with the operations around there so I can't comment on the excursions. The Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad, part of the North Shore System, has an engine house just a couple of miles up the road in Colville too. Apparently they do well out of that area, but I've not studied it well enough to catch much.



Aside from a neat depot and a couple of RDC's, BHRC has an old New Haven wood caboose (at least the trucks are NH) and an old wooden snow plow. For some of us that's reason enough to take our chances on this little detour.

BC