Mook

Regarding your reference to the Budd RDC cars. They had twin Detroit diesel engines mounted underneath the carbody. Each engine drove the inside axle of one truck via an Allison automatic transmission. Much of this came from the heavy haul truck parts of the era. The bubble on the roof contained the radiators. That same Detroit diesel engine was also used in some Crown school buses. The RDC was not designed to pull trailing coaches, although some roads did do this.

Here in the rolling hills of Eastern Washington, we had a RDC-2, NP B-30, that ran on NP's P&L branch between Spokane WA to Lewiston ID for 11 years - 3/1/1955 to 2/28/1966. If one of the diesel engines failed inroute, it couldn't pull itself up the "Kendrick hill" out of the Clearwater river valley (they had to have a boost from a Camas Prairie GP9) but once at the top of the grade at Howell ID, the Budd car could make it into Spokane on one engine. The RDC was very dependable and failures like this seldom happened. The NP kept a spare diesel motor at the Parkwater shops and could change it out overnight between the runs.

Here is the RDC at Pullman WA in 1961: