Nostalgia & History > silver New Haven Osgood Bradly coaches

In the mid 50's, Pat Mcginnes was president on the NH, which had the 2nd largest fleet of RDCs in the nation.   Pat decided to enlarge his fleet capacity by 
painting some Osgood Bradley light weight coaches from pre WWII in silver and placing one of them between two regular Budd RDCs.  The experiment lasted for a short time as
The Budd company threatened to invalidate the RDCs warrenty if that practice continued.  

I would like to see or find a picture of one of these cars in a broadside or near broadside view to see the placement of lettering on these cars.

Pat Mcginnes moved on to the Boston and Maine, which had the largest fleet of RDCs.  Pat continued his experimentation, but purchased some RDC cars from Budd
that had hotel power, but not propultion or contol positions at either end of the car  to be used between powered RDCs.   


THIA for any help or leads

kpcmcpkva    

kpcmcpkva Wrote:
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> Pat Mcginnis . . . purchased some
> RDC cars from Budd
> that had hotel power, but not propultion or
> contol positions at either end of the car  to be
> used between powered RDCs.   

Those would be the RDC9's, which had one engine. I always thought that one truck was powered. No?

Yes those were RDC 9s and purchased only by B&M.    My understanding was that they did not have traction power.  I could be in error.

Why the big jump in model designation from RDC 4 to RDC9??? 

kpcmcpkva Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes those were RDC 9s and purchased only by
> B&M.    My understanding was that they did not
> have traction power.  I could be in error.

CPR-4000 is correct.  The RDC 9's had one GM 6-110 engine (as opposed to two in all other RDC models), coupled to a Voith hydraulic transmission, providing traction.  IIRC, they had hostler controls only, allowing independent movement of the car, in an engine terminal.
>
> Why the big jump in model designation from RDC 4
> to RDC9??? 

Don't know the answer to this question.

Bob Callahan
Monticello, IN

The RDC 9's did have one powered truck, but as noted did not have cab controls and thus could only operate with other units.