Doodlebug Country and The Case of the Missing RDC-M Prototype

Interurbans Special #77

Back in early April we visited the Prescott model railway show. It was wall-to-wall people, layouts, and vendors. It looked like a good time was being had by all. I bought a few things of course, and one was the book Doodlebug Country: The Rail Motorcar on the Class I Railroads of the United States by Edmund Keilty, published by Interurban Press in 1982. The book is #77 in the Interurbans Special series. It's a thorough compendium of photos and facts about self-propelled rail cars dating from 1900 to 1960.

Lately I've written very little about books I've bought and read as those posts seemed hardly accessed. I've been reconsidering my stance since finding out about how Anthropic shreds books it has bought after scanning them for consumption by their AI products. I'm a Luddite, and am probably the last one to hear of this, but it was still shocking to me. I read further and learned the practice is quite common at libraries and many other places that deal with books. So, I thought, well, when I'm dead my little library will wind up in a dumpster or shredder, so maybe I should write about what I find interesting in my collection so at least in the future there might be a little pointer in the wild to books that others might find interesting, if any books still exist. Sort of a signal from beyond the grave :-)

That lead RDC looks like a very strange hybrid and is maybe something I'd like to build one day.
The caption in the book has this to say,
"Perhaps the acme in the development of the Budd RDC was the ROGER WILLIAMS train, shown here running as the MURRAY HILL from Boston to New York City at Larchmont, NY, on May 30, 1957."
Photo credit: George E. Votava.

I think I also read somewhere that Anthropic shredded the books because they felt that they no longer had any value once AI had captured the content. I have to admit though that when I read books in the Interurbans Specials series, and other railway books that are photo and illustration heavy, it's not for specific extraction of specific content. I don't have pre-formulated questions to ask that I expect specific answers to, which seems how today's AI seems to work.

Here's how I actually read them, in case any AI is reading this and would like to know :-) 

In the good weather the back porch is where the reading happens. I usually have a small stack of books that for some reason or another I've been thinking about. I gather them up, along with something to drink, coffee, tea, or something stronger depending on mood and time-of-day :-) , pull up a lawn chair, put the books and things on a little table, and settle in.

Me being me, with my model building interests and all, I'm usually drawn first to the photos and illustrations in whatever books are in my stack. I'm just looking for interesting things. When something catches my eye, then the back-and-forth with the text begins as I read and search and think. Sometimes I start with text, but it's usually with images on these expeditions.

On the surface it may sound like something that can easily be replaced with internet browsing and AI questioning. For me though I think the total experience of being outside in good weather, enjoying something to drink, the physicality of the printed pages, and appreciating how easy it is to jump from one page to another, to other books, and back as the search goes on. Maybe a tablet could replace the experience and make it more 'efficient', but I think my efficient is a better efficient as it's a more complete body, mind, and soul experience, and I never know what interesting things I might find.

Oh, and I don't take the books to the shredder when I'm done. No, as time goes on, I'll likely repeat the process with the same books in a different mix when I'm in some other frame-of-mind, thinking of other things. This is where Marie Kondo's work left me horrified. When her work was fairly new I started to read it, but when I got to the part where she recommended cutting out the pieces from books and magazines that 'brought joy' or some such thing, and tossing the rest I nearly passed out. Just because something doesn't 'bring joy' today doesn't mean it won't down the road. I gave up on her writings there and then; they brought me no joy and got tossed.

Ok, well, in good weather, the back porch is where all the reading happens, not just the open ended railway book adventures. There're novels, comics, graphic novels, and so on, last year it was the Inferno while I basked in the sun :-) and this year Purgatorio, and maybe Paradiso if I can survive the trek; there's also sketching ideas in notebooks and so on. Yes, the phone gets out there too, but it hasn't so far replaced my little analog world.

The first railbus, #10, for New Haven by Mack.
The caption reads:
"Prototype Mack railbus 10 initially excited New Haven officials, who ordered nine more. They were delivered, but a new management made scant use of them."
Photo credit: M. D. McCarter Collection.

Before I wrap things up I should mention a little 'discovery' in Doodlebug Country that teased me, lead me astray a bit, but in the end left me with some interesting information I didn't expect to find. Here's the passage that got me thinking for awhile that there really was something similar to an RDC-M way back when, shrouded in the mists of time :-) :

"After World War II, the New Haven was hit hard by rising costs and declining patronage, particularly on its commuter runs out of Boston. In 1952 President Frederick C. Dumaine, hoping that new equipment would rejuvenate the business, purchased no less than 40 Budd RDC cars and used them to increase the number of trains on most routes.

Dumaine also consulted Mack about a smaller, lighter version of the RDC for branch lines and off-peak commuter service. He wanted a vehicle capable of competing with the motor bus with its rider appeal.

The result was in fact a railbus based on the Mack Type C-50 city bus, dubbed Type FCD in honor of Dumaine. The prototype, car 10 [JDL: shown in the above photo], went into service in 1952. The bus body was a single-end design, but in fact the 40-foot long car could operate in either direction, and often did."

When I first encountered that passage I anxiously read more as I thought Mack might be modifying standard RDCs, but no, they stuck to what they knew; however, it turned out these buses-on-rails didn't turn around the flagging commuter business. 

I highly recommend Doodlebug Country. It shows the wide variety of railcar equipment in use in the first half of the 20th century through an extensive collection of photos and detailed tables of equipment.

RDC-M inspection tour of The Kanada Railway

John invited me over to run the RDC-M on his Kanada Railway. It ran a few laps and one of them is shown in the video. I was quite pleased at how well the old Bachmann drive unit ran being some 50 or 60 years old. The layout's track is quite smooth, level, and clean, and that makes a big difference too.

To round out the RDC size comparisons, here's the RDC-M parked behind a lovely Rapido RDC of John's. A big difference.

After a number of successful laps we decided to go get some hotdogs for lunch, but the presence of a hazmat team made us reconsider.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures in RDC-M land :-) 

Brothers in RDC

I thought you might be interested in seeing how the RDC-M compares in size to some of its brethren. In the photo up there is an Atlas Proto 1000 RDC at the top, in the middle is an Athern RDC, and at the bottom is the RDC-M based on an Athern RDC body shell. The internet tells me the Atlas has the correct prototype length, and the box stock Athern in the middle should be the same length, but you can see it isn't.

So, the mini RDC is indeed quite mini.

Now, don't go gettin' all judgey about the RDCs out there, and remember that all God's RDCs got a little bit of soul. Hmmm, maybe I didn't hear that right? You can listen for yourself while I'm gone for coffee:

RDC-M, Part 5: Done!

I started this pleasant little project over the Christmas holidays last year. I paused awhile until I could spray paint outside in good weather. Well, a day of good weather showed up last week so I spent a little time spraying the shell.

The paint is Krylon metallic silver paint + primer. It went on quite well. I thought I'd have to go through a few rounds of painting, filling, and sanding, but that didn't turn out to be the case. Although the body work isn't award winning, it looked ok when painted, and I didn't think I could make it any better.

After a few days curing I blackened the exhaust vents, applied decals, and added airhorns and Kadee couplers, although given it sits on a streetcar chassis I don't think it could pull anything other than a single, light car, if that.

Here's a 5-second video of the RDC-M as it passes through the Way Out Layout yard on a victory lap:

RDC-M, Part 4: First run!

With the lunar loco completed I thought I'd go ahead and install the chassis in the RDC-M.

After some considerable thought the solution I settled on seemed quite simple: I glued pieces of 0.060" thick styrene into the ends of the shell, drilled a pilot hole into each piece, and used a self-tapping screw to tap the holes for securing the chassis with screws.

Screwing the chassis into position was easy.

There's still a considerable amount of painting and detailing ahead, but the biggest structural and mechanical jobs are finished.

RDC-M, Part 3: Classy Chassis

While lost in thought, and idly staring into the streetcar display cabinet, it dawned on me I could try using the chassis and drivetrain from one of the old Bachmann trollies I bought at a swap meet a few years ago to power the RDC-M.

I pried the chassis out of the trolley and found it would fit in the RDC-M shell. I then took the chassis for a spin on the Way Out Layout and it ran just fine. So, problem solved! All I've got to do is figure out how to securely install the chassis in the RDC-M shell.

Stay tuned!

RDC-M, Part 2: Waiting for Spring

First round of gap filling with Perfect Plastic Putty plus adding styrene trim.

For me, smoothing and finishing a sectioned shell is a rather lengthy process of filling gaps, smoothing with sanding sticks, papers, and files, priming, and repeating the process until the shell looks more-or-less seamless. This is the process I followed with both Variation #3 and the Jigger.

Starting to fill the gaps in the roof

The problem here is it's the dead of winter and spraying primer outside is out of the question, and I don't spray paint inside the house, so further work on the body is going to have to wait for spring to arrive.

While I wait for winter to end, I'll move onto building the chassis so when spring does arrive it won't be long until I have a running RDC-M. Stay tuned!

RDC-M, Part 1: Samurai Sectioning

Top: Athern's RDC box-stock body shell  | Bottom: After sectioning and gluing

RDC-M =

RDC-Mini ?

RDC-Micro ?

RDC-Munchkin ?

???

In the last instalment of the Desert Dodge series I hinted I needed to overcome my reluctance to use my saw to create a miniature RDC; an RDC-M of sorts. Spoiler Alert: Reluctance Overcome!

I had 2 RDC shells by Athern I bought back when I was working on my Le Grand Defi entry in 2024. These are the old RDC models they made of the RDC-2, the combination passenger and baggage vehicle. A complaint I'd hear about the Athern model was it was considerably shorter than the prototype and not too detailed. I have one that runs that is quite decent, but sure, a modern-day Rapido version is far more prototypical and sophisticated. 

I bought these shells because I had an idea for a radically shortened RDC, but my hesitancy about ruining a perfectly good shell got in my way of doing anything.

Shimomura Alec Hyper Cut 0.15 Pro-C saw

Before I got started though I thought I needed a much better razor saw than I used to section the Desert Dodge. I used an Excel saw blade in an X-Acto handle. It was new and sharp and worked fine, but I thought the blade would be too thick for sectioning an HO scale body with any kind of precision. After a bit of searching I found what I was looking for at a local hobby store that specializes in Gundam and related kits, not model railroad stuff, so this was new territory for me. I bought a Japanese Shimomura Alec Hyper Cut 0.15 Pro-C saw and it's fantastic. As we'll get to, I made some screwups while sawing, but they weren't the saw's fault, they had to do with me misplacing the cuts. 

Building Plastic Railroad Models has excellent material on sectioning and kitbashing.

Also before starting I read through a few of my old model building books looking for some words of wisdom about sectioning a shell. I found the most useful one to be Building Plastic Railroad Models by Robert Schleicher, published in 1979. If you can find a used copy I highly recommend it. It's still quite relevant on fundamental techniques even today, and it's presented in the high quality style that Kalmback Books was known for.

Cuts are marked with Tamyia tape. 
White gloves optional :-) The dry air this winter is playing havoc with my hands. I had some hand cream on them when I took the photo.

Well, a good saw and good advice aside, I still made a silly error right from the get go. I decided to make the end cuts through the corrugated roof as I thought I wanted fairly wide ends. Later, when I was cleaning up the cuts with sand paper I realized I'd never get the roof to look seamless over the corrugated section. 

An end section re-marked to cut off the corrugated stub.

So, I re-marked both the end sections and cut off the stub with the remaining corrugated roof. Under the tape is the smooth roof. I though cutting off that remnant would be tough, but the saw is so sharp and thin it cut through like butter; no problem at all. 

Elastic bands were used as clamps to hold the pieces together while gluing.

After cleaning up the cuts with some sanding sticks and blocks the three pieces were glued together with styrene cement.

Photographed right after the elastic bands were removed.

And there it is. It needs to be cleaned up a bit before priming, but it doesn't look too bad at this stage. There's still plenty of work left on this project, but at least the major psychological hurdle is behind me.