Does any one knows who invented this concept and how long it lasted?
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=202021&nseq=73
The go-to book on what I call the "lightweight experimental" era is NEW YORK CENTRAL AND THE TRAINS OF THE FUTURE. By Geoffrey H. Doughty. TLC Publishing, Inc., 1387 Winding Creek Lane, Lynchburg, Va., 25043-3776. (804) 385-4076 -- don't try ordering from TLC because it is out of print. I understand Santa is getting me a copy for Christmas by way of used book broker -- can anyone tell me where to get a copy of David Wardale "The Red Devil and Other Tales from the Age of Steam"?
You had steam traction and "heavyweight" cars. Then you had the Budd Pioneer and the Union Pacific M1000 equipment -- aluminum or Shotweld stainless construction, Jacobs bogie (articulated 2-axle truck like on the TGV), streamlined underframes and truck sideframes, and such. Following that came the standard AAR "lightweight" cars and locomotives like the E7, E8, and F3 and F7's in passenger service. This was the last major upgrade of passenger rolling stock prior to Amtrak -- it is the Amtrak and VIA "Heritage Fleet."
By the mid 1950's there was one last shot by the freight railroads to revamp passenger service with new equipment, but it didn't catch on, partly because the equipment was too far off standard practices, partly because rail passenger service was in decline and there wasn't the money or inclination for for-profit railroad companies to purchase a generation of passenger equipment beyond the "lightweight" cars. The lightweight experimentals (the mid 1950's stuff) got a bad rap in railroad writing, from Peter Lyons "To Hell in a Day Coach" on forward, but one of the lightweight experimentals (the Budd Pioneer III) is still with us in the form of Amfleet.
The Patrick McGinnis New Haven was one railroad that tried to "save" its extensive but money-losing passenger operation with new trains. There were three of them named after historical figures relating to New England: Roger Williams (guy chased out of Boston by the Puritans and founded Rhode Island -- his train was the low-profile RDC's with the locomotive noses), Daniel Webster (famous member of Congress, his train was the Robert Young-inspired -- the railroad tycoon, not the actor -- Train-X, guided-axle pendulum-tilt predecessor of the TurboTrain, with Baldwin-Maybach lightweight Diesel hydraulics at each end), and John Quincy Adams (President who was son of a President, nicknamed "Q" (OK, just kidding) and played by Anthony Hopkins in the movies, his train was an ACF bi-directional guided-axle but non-tilting Talgo with Fairbanks Morse Speed Merchant lightweight Diesel electrics at each end).
To my knowledge, all of these trains were "dual modes", having third-rail electric pickup shoes to feed light traction motors to enter Grand Central Terminal via tunnel in electric mode. The New Haven-DOT TurboTrain, by the way, was also a dual mode. I heard that dual mode operation was always problematic in terms of maintaining the pickup shoes, and the lightweight experimentals were particularly problematic, largely because of union boundaries between locomotive and car work and these passenger "unit trains" didn't separate their locomotives to go to the locomotive service area. But I heard that dual-mode operation of FL-9's was also wishful thinking and that they stunk up the tunnel and Grand Central with running Diesels.
Peter Lyons, someone who knew Anthony Haswell well enough to lend his name to the "NARP Board", had it in for the railroads and described the lighweight experimentals as a half-hearted effort to do something for passengers, which he claimed they were failing at because they didn't have their heart in it. He lumped the RDC "Hot Rod" (the "chopped, lowered, and streamlined" version of the Budd RDC) in with the others and described them all as being substandard and giving a bad ride. That is perhaps unfair, given that the Roger Williams lasted into Amtrak times as the picture shows, and after all, it was a Budd car, and I have never known Budd to build anything that wasn't halfway decent if not very good.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul:
Thanks for the information.
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