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Locked Budd Letter to Southern Rwy 4-28-47
George Eichelberger
The attached letter from Budd to the Southern, 4-28-47 is one of a series of letters in the SRHA archives where Southern asked Budd, ACF and Pullman to change the design of the side sheets on cars on their cars to be delivered as part of the 1947 “Royal Palm” order. The Southern wanted car sides (fluting, skirts, windows, roofs) from the three companies to more or less match.
The response from Budd follows. The entire file is in the SRHA archives.
Ike
George Eichelberger
Apparently, the question began from the NYC’s cars in the order. They started the issue of having 3 inch skirts on their lightweight cars. There is an entire sequence of correspondence between the carbuilders, the NYC, L&N, FEC, PRR and Southern about that (everyone agreed to the size) and the conversation changed to roofs, window heights, etc.
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In 1947, the railroads may not have appreciated the difference between stainless steel (Budd) and steel/aluminum (Pullman and ACF) passenger cars. The corrugated Budd roof design was proven to be superior but apparently P-S and ACF did not want to deal with it. (i.e. license the “Shotweld” process from Budd.)
Looking at the size of 1940s & 50s passenger car file, what I was not aware of is how much time and effort the Southern spent planning their lightweight cars or the effort to get the different railroads in car “pool” to agree on details. Like many things in the archives, there are interesting tidbits among all the paper. (Help is needed to get the passenger car drawings and files organized and scanned.)
Ike
On Jul 3, 2021, at 8:17 AM, Rob Wingo <robertawingo@...> wrote:
I wonder who the guy was that thought they could
call up Ford and ask them to modify their cars to look like Chevy? My response would have been “If you wanted all your cars to look the same you should have bought from the same manufacturer.”
But I guess it didn’t hurt to ask.
call up Ford and ask them to modify their cars to look like Chevy? My response would have been “If you wanted all your cars to look the same you should have bought from the same manufacturer.”
But I guess it didn’t hurt to ask.