NORTH CANAAN, Conn. — The Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum of Lenox, Mass., in collaboration with the Houstatonic Railroad and Budd RDC Foundation, will display the Budd-built Roger Williams trainset on Saturday, July 20, as part of Canaan Railroad Days in North Canaan.
Railroad Days, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary, recognizes the rich railroad history of town and its Union Depot, which dates to 1872 and originally served the Housatonic and Connecticut Western railroads. The town-wide, multi-day event includes carnival rides, a parade, and fireworks, and this year will feature a drone show and an outdoor slide presentation featuring images of the Berkshire Line taken by New Haven engineer Pete McLachlan.
The display of the three remaining cars of the Roger Williams, built for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad as a six-car trainset of RDC equipment with streamliner cabs on each end and intermediate cars without the usual RDC operating controls and cabs, is scheduled to run from noon to 6 p.m. It will be the first time in decades the train’s interior will be open for viewing and will include an interpretive exhibit explaining the significance of the rare trainset. Equipment from the Housatonic Railroad and volunteers from the Danbury Railroad Museum will also be present. The parade and fireworks show are also set for Saturday.
“This is a great way to not only celebrate Canaan Railroad Days but kick off the museum’s 40th anniversary celebration, with a formal celebration taking place at Lenox Station the following week,” said Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum President Tom Delasco. “We appreciate the town of North Canaan’s hospitality and our collaborative relationship with the Housatonic Railroad to make this unique opportunity a reality.”
The museum and the Budd RDC Foundation formalized an agreement in 2023 to restore and operate cars from the collection, which included the Roger Williams, B&O RDC2 No. 1960 and New Haven RDC1 No. 41 [see “Berkshire Scenic to lease surviving ‘Roger Williams’ equipment …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 19, 2023]. The equipment had been stored at the former Hobo Railroad in Lincoln, N.H., with the Roger Williams relocated to the museum in Lenox, while Nos. 1960 and 41 are now at the museum’s Hoosac Valley Train Ride in Adams, Mass.
Over the last 10 years, the museum has become expert on Budd’s Rail Diesel Cars, amassing a large collection of spare parts to support continued to operation and interpretation The Roger Williams trainset moved under its own power in April for the first time in 30 years, and work is continuing on its mechanical systems with the goal of having all three cars operational by 2025. At the Hoosac Valley Train Ride, No. 41 is slated to enter service this week, with No. 1960 following later this summer.
New Haven, Penn Central and Amtrak would regularly run the cabs with conventional RDC’s.
The Roger Williams was one of three lightweight trainsets to recapture the NY-Boston market foe New Haven. In this case it used Budd RDC with two GM 6-110 diesels under the floor powering the train through hydraulic transmissions with lockup capability. Each car also had 600 vDC motors for use in NY’s GCT.
They were by far the most successful of the three experimental trains, meaning these three of the original cars were still in service when Amtrak came in, One of Amtrak’s uses was to couple the two cab cars back to back and run them on the “inland route” Boston-Springfield-New Haven.
B&O 1960 was built as an RDC baggage-dining-coach in an RDC-2 body. 1960 and 1961 were the baggage-meal-coach cars on the Daylight Speedliners between Philadelphia/Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
Thanks for this post, Philip. There was the Roger Williams, a second was Talgo set, and a third I don’t know, possibly I’d be able to find it in Scott Hartley’s book about New Haven’s final years. I was very young but I do recall going trackside in Sharon to look at one of these transets. There was a lot of hype about these trains, as would happen later with the United Aircraft turbos. But as David P. Morgan would later write, the problems with passenger rail in America didn’t stem for bad equipment, nor would newer, good equipment save the trains.
You do hit an interesting point, that these Budd cars were meant for the main line Boston to New York, neither the branches nor the commuter trains.
The Talgo set was the John Q. Adams with FM Speed Merchant power cars, one at each end. The third was the Dan’l Webster with P-S Train X cars and topped and tailed with Baldwin (!) diesel-hydraulic power cars with Maybach diesels. A Maybach is the total opposite of a De La Vergne 606NA.
Yes, under the carbodies the Roger Williams cars were RDC’s and could MU with other RDC’s. RDC’s have a truss structure under the side sheathing so the RW had a different design of side sheathing without needing a lot of redesigning. The RW coaches had one vestibule.