Reliving the dream

RDC-1, all passenger. RDC-2, baggage and passenger. RDC-3, mail, baggage and passenger. RDC-4, mail and baggage only.

As regular readers will be aware I have a penchant for diesel railcars and I posted recently about a vintage Tri-ang model of a Budd Rail Diesel Car (RDC) similar to one I saw in a Whitby shop window some fifty odd years ago.

My bid on eBay was surpassed to some tune, it sold for £68 plus postage, and that with its bodywork being in quite poor condition! There is a two car set of RDC-2s, marketed in the United States under the ATT (American Tri-ang Trains?) brand, also listed on eBay.

Their bodywork is in much better condition so I expect the price will skyrocket as the sell by date gets closer so I have not even bothered bidding on these.

I don’t want one of these as a collectors’ item though, it will get used on a layout, so something a bit newer will fit the bill. I have been successful with an opening bid on an Athearn model of an RDC-3, a lot cheaper at £25 plus postage. Obviously nobody else was bidding on it.

In common with the Tri-ang/ATT models it is not full scale length, there should be six windows in the passenger compartment instead of five, but I can cope with this by saying it was built by Budd as a custom order for a former interurban line with sharp curves in places so a shorter car was required. Hey, if it’s a freelance railroad it can have freelance history! There were custom design RDCs built for the New Haven RR so it is not beyond the bounds of believability.

It also differs significantly from my two Life-Like RDC-2s (below) in having the later body style with corrugations wrapped around the ends and smaller cab windows.

The railcars can be used on Arundale or Cognito but I could build a new single line terminus for them because the Canadian National RDC-2 would be out of place in Cognito’s arid scenery. Alternatively I could refurbish Marsdenby. The only major change would be replacing the dirt road on one of the bridges with a single track railway. This micro could then be dual purpose, still serving as a home for John’s 19th century trains and also being used by the American railcars… Though obviously not both at once.

The RDCs would then provide a frequent commuter service from the leafy ‘burbs to a nearby city.

Floor level platforms would put it somewhere in the North East so there’s a strong temptation to go for autumn colours on the backscene.

Now that idea I quite like.