I worked building the rail geometry system used in the FRA's SPV2000 called T-10. It was an interesting mechanical configuration in that a lot of stuff had to work for the car to work right. There were three engines from two different companies. Our vehicle has a pair of GM 6-92s as prime movers and a Perkins (British) diesel mounted under the middle of the car to run the APU (alternator). T-10 had been structurally modified in a few ways to make it more suitable as a track geometry vehicle. I rode T-10 on and off for a few years as part of its shakedown and the field support of its geometry system. The geometry system represented an advance for its time. T-10 did a lot of good providing precise measurements of how the track lay at the point of contact under a loaded and moving vehicle. We measured geometry at speeds up to 80MPH. Actually, from an instrumentation point of view, holding accuracy at slow speeds perhaps a larger problem. The vehicle spent years identifying rail maintenance safety issues over much of the country. We were not the typical operator as we had a dedicated staff operating and maintaining the vehicle. We (Ensco Inc.) developed a great deal of experience with that particular vehicle. We held on to the FRA contract and many of the same people for quite a few years. The continuity of people and pride in the vehicle helped keep it operational. I was not involved with its later life as an FRA vehicle so cannot comment on whatever issues it had later in its life. Thanks for the interesting video.
Thank you so much for the video! Everybody knows about the Budd Rdc not much is known about the SPV. I actually live just five miles south of where the Budd plant was that made these machines. The Budd company had an important part in railroad history but it also played a major role in the industrial history of the Philadelphia area. Budd had another plant here in Philly it was located on Hunting Park Avenue. That is the plant where they make car parts. I trained back in the middle 80s be a welder literally three blocks away from where that plant used to be. Our welding teacher at the time,boasted that if we worked hard we could get a job down at the plant and make $10 an hour. A lot has changed since the mid-80s and I guess thankfully so. Thank you again for the video and to keep the memory of Edward Budd who was a true industrial innovator at his company alive!
Nice video! One thing that I think would have made the SPV’s more reliable is if they got rid of one of the engines. That way, they wouldn’t be slipping too much, and they would be much lighter.
They were sitting in the boneyard right here in New haven since I got hired in 2008. I had to walk through them all and grab safety equipment after Katrina and it was quite a nasty job. Great video
Great video! Always Enjoy this series! My favorite rd too! I would love to see the F40 PH and some West Of Hudson trains. And GPs... And I know lots of people would love to see you do LIRR. Great videos! Looking forward to the next ones! Cheers!
The VRE never used these. They used the first Budd RDC models (1949---) sans engines (Boise Budds) and were pulled by locomotives. They acquired them from the Bay Area Transportation Authority (Boston). Some of those now serve the Grand Canyon Railway.
i worked for metronorth starting in 1985 for 2.5 years as an electrician. Most of my time there i spent working on the 10 car fleet of SPV's , and boy did these cars need work !!! Of the 10 cars they had we had at least one car on the drop table every week for an engine or transmission change the entire time i worked there!! They had 2 drive engines Detroit Diesel 8v92's and one Detroit Diesel 4-71 APU engine. The part in the video about the union regulation for a fireman that forced them to remove the drive shafts between the inboard and outboard axles is true and in my opinion was a major cause of engine failure from overspeeding. The two inboard axles could not generate enough traction to handle the torque from the drive engines and would just spin the wheels like crazy on acceleration. These cars were so bad they had a technician ride the train to restart the engines every trip from croton to Poughkeepsie. The engines control / overload panel was on the side of the car so the train had to be stopped and someone had to go down to the road bed open control panel cover , reset the tripped overload breakers and restart engine. One interesting thing in the video was the author referred to the meaning of SPV as special purpose vehicle , i only new it as Self Propelled Vehicle . i did work on the RDC's also , it was a much more reliable machine.
Am I the only one who noticed that, in photos of trains taken from almost head on, that the railcars are built with a couple inches of 'hog' in them? That is, the cars are higher up in their middles than at the ends, where they attach to other cars
Pretty much. In fact, the Budd RDC was the basis of the electrified Pioneer III cars used by the Pennsylvania RR, which then evolved into the Budd Silverliner II (used by the PRR/PC and Reading until 1976, Conrail from 1976 to 1983, and SEPTA from 1983 until retirement in the mid-2010s), and the Budd Metroliners; the St. Louis Car Company using the Silverliner II design for the Silverliner III (for PRR Philadelphia-Harrisburg service) and Arrow I & II (for North Jersey/NYC service); with GE/Avco building the Silverliner IV (PC/RDG/CR/SEPTA) and Arrow III (PC/EL/CR/NJT): the latter two models still in service (along with the Hyundai-Rotem Silverliner V cars, which despite the name, does not have the Budd RDC & Pioneer III pedigree).
9:479:48 These newly-refurbished railcars would be referred to as Constitutionliners, and they would be used on Shore Line East until the railroad celebrated the acquisition of their brand new Mafersa coaches from Virginia Railway Express in 2004 after the new cars finished testing on the system.
It was a shame that it was a failure. I know one issue was that it was underpowered, although some claimed that one power unit was disconnected to keep from having to have 2 people in the cab, not sure about that
They eventually got to be so bad that they had to always be run at least two coupled together at all times so that "when" one broke down, the other could haul it in.
If there was a need to have them powered it's going to be slapping Alstom Coradia Polyvalent components at Hornell plant or use Modified ALP-45DP engines under the floor at Bombardier Plattsburgh, NY plant.
On the contrary the Grapevine Vintage Railroad in Grapevine, Texas has 3 of these cars 2 coaches in one cab car Currently only one is in operation as a coach the other 2 are waiting a restoration
@@nyrailfan202.... Great videos and video quality.. well done! I subscribed after watching the first video I found of yours.. just yesterday (Sept.3rd, 2021)... on the RDC's, of which I'm a huge fan... mainly because of the beautiful sound of those twin 6-110NA Detroit Diesels. Anyway, I have a question for you in regards to this video on the SPV2000's, and that is... exactly which Detroit Diesel (aka GM Diesel, pre-1965) engines were being used that were rated at 360hp each? There were several of their engines in that era that could easily be rated at that power output level, so...??? Us "gear-heads" that watch videos like yours, like to know that kind of information. : ) Seeing as how the SPV2000 was unveiled in 1978, my guess would be that they were "possibly" powered by the Series 92 V8 (Naturally aspirated by a Roots blower) which was released in 1974 (until Nov.1995), and a common rating for that particular model was 360 hp (turbocharged versions went up to 720hp and even higher on custom built V8 - 92's). Was the main "issues" with the SPV2000's drive train, primarily with engines, or in the drive train itself ??
@@Romans--bo7br The FRA's SPV2000 (called T-10) had a pair of GM 8-92s as prime movers. It also had a Perkins mounted mid-ship to run an alternator. Yes, two different brands--- one English.
@@bruceclarkson7656... Hi Bruce, thank you for the reply... good information to know. I never did get a reply back to my questions to "nyrailfan 202" ... the fellow who posted the video. One thing that saddens me a lot is the fact of many of the restored Budd RDC's (aka "Buddliners"), have been re-powered with Cummins (mostly) 4 strokes... which to me, completely removes the "heart & soul /character" of what the Budd RDC's were. Without the beautiful drone of those twin 6-110's... they're just not "Budd RDC's" anymore. I've never had any discussions with anyone intimately involved with any of those restorations, to ask them "Why ?" they didn't have the engines at least rebuilt, or better yet.. remanned. I can understand Not doing so with the 1st generation 110's if they needed a new or remanned centrifugal blower, but there were tens of thousands of the upgraded blocks / engines built with the roots blower, as well as the 3rd generation that were turbocharged as well.... 15 years before the first 8-71T was introduced. Even with a bad Centrifugal blower (unless the engine was over-sped above 2100 with one of those on there for scavenging), there are "after-market" way around that as well. these days. PS: In your comment below here, you mentioned that there were Two, 6-92's in the units you were associated with..... and Two 8-92's in your reply to me, here. Just a "typo" I'm sure, but were they 6's or 8's?? How many rpms's were they governed at, at full throttle? Perkins Diesel, back in the late 1970s and 1980s were Marketed by Detroit Diesel for a number of years, before they entered into a marketing agreement with John Deere's engines.... on the lower end of JD's hp line-up, to add to DD's "portfolio".
@@nyrailfan202 Was briefly used as a royal train under King Hassan the Second. Since King Mohammed, the Sixth came to the throne, they have seldom if ever turned a wheel under him.
Why couldn't Budd have just built more RDCs? Update the engines to meet emissions and fuel efficiency regulations (if those even applied to railcars in the 1970s) and call it a day.
The RDC’s still operating in the 70’s were still reliable. So railroads needed a better reason to replace them which might have been the comfort or speed that the SPC-2000 offered.
@@nyrailfan202 That would have been okay if the SPV2000s had been reliable. But it couldn't have been that hard to design an updated RDC (as above) with more comfortable seats and more powerful engines (they were already on the upward trend in the later RDCs) and igher gearing.
Buddy decided to go with the SPV and then when they failed budd’s executives don’t always make the most logical decisions. They decided that budd should just leave the DMU market which is why they never even had the chance to do that.
Budd built some of the most iconic rolling stock in railroad history. The RDCs had their place in railroad history. What happened to Budd after that? The Metroliners were unreliable. The SPV2000 was an unmitigated disaster.
Seems like if Budd tried to hard to one up the RDC with the SPV, if they would’ve just claimed it as the RDC 2 and done the bare minimum in the upgrading of the equipment and released it, I think it would’ve done better both in attracting buyers and mechanically
How about a new SPV-200/RDC type made out of Budd's Viewliner design? Try again, make a better design of diésel engines and modern microprocessors.... VIA still runs RDC's
It would be possible but now with Siemens and Saddler entering the US market more aggressively they could adapt one of their European DMU designs for use in the US.
It failed because of a rule a union had that was eventually done away with but rather than wait the railroads removed the extra driveshafts before it was done
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I worked building the rail geometry system used in the FRA's SPV2000 called T-10. It was an interesting mechanical configuration in that a lot of stuff had to work for the car to work right. There were three engines from two different companies. Our vehicle has a pair of GM 6-92s as prime movers and a Perkins (British) diesel mounted under the middle of the car to run the APU (alternator). T-10 had been structurally modified in a few ways to make it more suitable as a track geometry vehicle.
I rode T-10 on and off for a few years as part of its shakedown and the field support of its geometry system. The geometry system represented an advance for its time. T-10 did a lot of good providing precise measurements of how the track lay at the point of contact under a loaded and moving vehicle. We measured geometry at speeds up to 80MPH. Actually, from an instrumentation point of view, holding accuracy at slow speeds perhaps a larger problem. The vehicle spent years identifying rail maintenance safety issues over much of the country.
We were not the typical operator as we had a dedicated staff operating and maintaining the vehicle. We (Ensco Inc.) developed a great deal of experience with that particular vehicle. We held on to the FRA contract and many of the same people for quite a few years. The continuity of people and pride in the vehicle helped keep it operational.
I was not involved with its later life as an FRA vehicle so cannot comment on whatever issues it had later in its life.
Thanks for the interesting video.
Typo above. Prime movers were a pair of 8-92's.
Thank you so much for the video! Everybody knows about the Budd Rdc not much is known about the SPV. I actually live just five miles south of where the Budd plant was that made these machines. The Budd company had an important part in railroad history but it also played a major role in the industrial history of the Philadelphia area. Budd had another plant here in Philly it was located on Hunting Park Avenue. That is the plant where they make car parts. I trained back in the middle 80s be a welder literally three blocks away from where that plant used to be. Our welding teacher at the time,boasted that if we worked hard we could get a job down at the plant and make $10 an hour. A lot has changed since the mid-80s and I guess thankfully so. Thank you again for the video and to keep the memory of Edward Budd who was a true industrial innovator at his company alive!
Nice video! One thing that I think would have made the SPV’s more reliable is if they got rid of one of the engines. That way, they wouldn’t be slipping too much, and they would be much lighter.
They were sitting in the boneyard right here in New haven since I got hired in 2008. I had to walk through them all and grab safety equipment after Katrina and it was quite a nasty job. Great video
Great video! Always Enjoy this series! My favorite rd too! I would love to see the F40 PH and some West Of Hudson trains. And GPs... And I know lots of people would love to see you do LIRR. Great videos! Looking forward to the next ones! Cheers!
9:50 Constitutionliners
These SPV’s looked good and nice in my opinion. Though, I’m wondering If any of the SPV’s have been sent for scrap.
As most of them are newer than Amfleet and as there were only a few made they are still perfectly good coaches
nyrailfan 202 Good to know! 👍
The VRE never used these. They used the first Budd RDC models (1949---) sans engines (Boise Budds) and were pulled by locomotives. They acquired them from the Bay Area Transportation Authority (Boston). Some of those now serve the Grand Canyon Railway.
i worked for metronorth starting in 1985 for 2.5 years as an electrician. Most of my time there i spent working on the 10 car fleet of SPV's , and boy did these cars need work !!! Of the 10 cars they had we had at least one car on the drop table every week for an engine or transmission change the entire time i worked there!!
They had 2 drive engines Detroit Diesel 8v92's and one Detroit Diesel 4-71 APU engine.
The part in the video about the union regulation for a fireman that forced them to remove the drive shafts between the inboard and outboard axles is true and in my opinion was a major cause of engine failure from overspeeding. The two inboard axles could not generate enough traction to handle the torque from the drive engines and would just spin the wheels like crazy on acceleration. These cars were so bad they had a technician ride the train to restart the engines every trip from croton to Poughkeepsie.
The engines control / overload panel was on the side of the car so the train had to be stopped and someone had to go down to the road bed open control panel cover , reset the tripped overload breakers and restart engine.
One interesting thing in the video was the author referred to the meaning of SPV as special purpose vehicle , i only new it as Self Propelled Vehicle .
i did work on the RDC's also , it was a much more reliable machine.
The spv 2000 was kind of like the mistake you made an exception for until it got too bad
I did not expect this to come so quick. Another great review
Neither did I, just gotta figure out what’s next
Here we go again, perfect vids
Glad you enjoyed it
The SPVs were a disaster in so many ways. I remember riding on them in the 80s and diesel exhaust would leak into the passenger compartment.
The exhaust was part of the illusion. Once inhaled you may think that the cars were quite reliable
Am I the only one who noticed that, in photos of trains taken from almost head on, that the railcars are built with a couple inches of 'hog' in them? That is, the cars are higher up in their middles than at the ends, where they attach to other cars
Is a sad story becaus the spv-2000 could have been a success, it had a lot of potential. If it were only more reliable like it’s predecessor.
Exactly
Could have worked better
0:48 0:49
9:54 new mass fer coaches, brovirginia relway express in 2004
8:07 didn’t help either
So basically the Budd RDC could be a contender to be considered the "Douglas DC-3 of the rails"?
Pretty much. In fact, the Budd RDC was the basis of the electrified Pioneer III cars used by the Pennsylvania RR, which then evolved into the Budd Silverliner II (used by the PRR/PC and Reading until 1976, Conrail from 1976 to 1983, and SEPTA from 1983 until retirement in the mid-2010s), and the Budd Metroliners; the St. Louis Car Company using the Silverliner II design for the Silverliner III (for PRR Philadelphia-Harrisburg service) and Arrow I & II (for North Jersey/NYC service); with GE/Avco building the Silverliner IV (PC/RDG/CR/SEPTA) and Arrow III (PC/EL/CR/NJT): the latter two models still in service (along with the Hyundai-Rotem Silverliner V cars, which despite the name, does not have the Budd RDC & Pioneer III pedigree).
@nyrailfan 202 Is Metro North 293 at the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum?
Yes another one! Keep them coming!
Yeah got this one out fast
9:47 9:48 These newly-refurbished railcars would be referred to as Constitutionliners, and they would be used on Shore Line East until the railroad celebrated the acquisition of their brand new Mafersa coaches from Virginia Railway Express in 2004 after the new cars finished testing on the system.
9:54 is a celebration for these cars
I remember seeing these on the Buffalo Bills Express as a kid
9:59 The 12 Constitutionliners were left without a home once again!
Seen this on a storage track north of Stamford sta. don't know if it's still there though. This was back when I was kid
10:10 The rest sat in New Haven Yard again, and they’re used as backup cars for Metro North Services…
It was a shame that it was a failure. I know one issue was that it was underpowered, although some claimed that one power unit was disconnected to keep from having to have 2 people in the cab, not sure about that
They eventually got to be so bad that they had to always be run at least two coupled together at all times so that "when" one broke down, the other could haul it in.
Yup
Both of the power units were left connected, but the intermediate driveshafts were removed, so only one axle per truck was powered.
Which then made problems
I like this video, thank you. Happy new year.
Same too you
3:00 You got that!
They have now been shipped to the Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec Railroad in Mexico.
I thought SPV stood for self-propelled vehicle
What would be next im waiting for more videos of engines of Metro North
I’m not sure
There is one at the grapevine vintage railroad in grapevine tx
If there was a need to have them powered it's going to be slapping Alstom Coradia Polyvalent components at Hornell plant or use Modified ALP-45DP engines under the floor at Bombardier Plattsburgh, NY plant.
On the contrary the Grapevine Vintage Railroad in Grapevine, Texas has 3 of these cars 2 coaches in one cab car Currently only one is in operation as a coach the other 2 are waiting a restoration
Nice
@@nyrailfan202.... Great videos and video quality.. well done! I subscribed after watching the first video I found of yours.. just yesterday (Sept.3rd, 2021)... on the RDC's, of which I'm a huge fan... mainly because of the beautiful sound of those twin 6-110NA Detroit Diesels. Anyway, I have a question for you in regards to this video on the SPV2000's, and that is... exactly which Detroit Diesel (aka GM Diesel, pre-1965) engines were being used that were rated at 360hp each?
There were several of their engines in that era that could easily be rated at that power output level, so...??? Us "gear-heads" that watch videos like yours, like to know that kind of information. : )
Seeing as how the SPV2000 was unveiled in 1978, my guess would be that they were "possibly" powered by the Series 92 V8 (Naturally aspirated by a Roots blower) which was released in 1974 (until Nov.1995), and a common rating for that particular model was 360 hp (turbocharged versions went up to 720hp and even higher on custom built V8 - 92's). Was the main "issues" with the SPV2000's drive train, primarily with engines, or in the drive train itself ??
@@Romans--bo7br The FRA's SPV2000 (called T-10) had a pair of GM 8-92s as prime movers. It also had a Perkins mounted mid-ship to run an alternator. Yes, two different brands--- one English.
@@bruceclarkson7656... Hi Bruce, thank you for the reply... good information to know. I never did get a reply back to my questions to "nyrailfan 202" ... the fellow who posted the video.
One thing that saddens me a lot is the fact of many of the restored Budd RDC's (aka "Buddliners"), have been re-powered with Cummins (mostly) 4 strokes... which to me, completely removes the "heart & soul /character" of what the Budd RDC's were.
Without the beautiful drone of those twin 6-110's... they're just not "Budd RDC's" anymore.
I've never had any discussions with anyone intimately involved with any of those restorations, to ask them "Why ?" they didn't have the engines at least rebuilt, or better yet.. remanned.
I can understand Not doing so with the 1st generation 110's if they needed a new or remanned centrifugal blower, but there were tens of thousands of the upgraded blocks / engines built with the roots blower, as well as the 3rd generation that were turbocharged as well.... 15 years before the first 8-71T was introduced.
Even with a bad Centrifugal blower (unless the engine was over-sped above 2100 with one of those on there for scavenging), there are "after-market" way around that as well. these days.
PS: In your comment below here, you mentioned that there were Two, 6-92's in the units you were associated with..... and Two 8-92's in your reply to me, here. Just a "typo" I'm sure, but were they 6's or 8's?? How many rpms's were they governed at, at full throttle? Perkins Diesel, back in the late 1970s and 1980s were Marketed by Detroit Diesel for a number of years, before they entered into a marketing agreement with John Deere's engines.... on the lower end of JD's hp line-up, to add to DD's "portfolio".
@@Romans--bo7br Definitely 8-92's driving two speed forward and reverse twindisk transmissions.
He makes videos like he has 100k Subscribers, so professional
Means a lot, thanks
Yess I been waiting for this
Hopefully I delivered
@@nyrailfan202 you did thx
10:15 but then the remaining 10 cars were sent to New Orleans for hurricane standby duty
I find it crazy how Amtrak had Budd SPV-2000s
If they had kept all axles powered, would they have been better? And what happened to the units that went to Morocco?
We don’t know what happened to the units that went to Morocco
@@nyrailfan202 Was briefly used as a royal train under King Hassan the Second. Since King Mohammed, the Sixth came to the throne, they have seldom if ever turned a wheel under him.
Well they were also unreliable so probably for the best
@@nyrailfan202 Totally.
Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
Why couldn't Budd have just built more RDCs? Update the engines to meet emissions and fuel efficiency regulations (if those even applied to railcars in the 1970s) and call it a day.
The RDC’s still operating in the 70’s were still reliable. So railroads needed a better reason to replace them which might have been the comfort or speed that the SPC-2000 offered.
@@nyrailfan202 That would have been okay if the SPV2000s had been reliable. But it couldn't have been that hard to design an updated RDC (as above) with more comfortable seats and more powerful engines (they were already on the upward trend in the later RDCs) and igher gearing.
Buddy decided to go with the SPV and then when they failed budd’s executives don’t always make the most logical decisions. They decided that budd should just leave the DMU market which is why they never even had the chance to do that.
@@nyrailfan202 Not the first and not the last example of mismanagement in the railroad industry and its support industries . . . .
That could have been done using the Silverliner IV or Arrow III body.
Budd built some of the most iconic rolling stock in railroad history. The RDCs had their place in railroad history. What happened to Budd after that? The Metroliners were unreliable. The SPV2000 was an unmitigated disaster.
Small little fact
A new mexican railroad ( Ferrocarril del istmo de Tehuantepec ) actually owns some Budd SPV-2000's
This desiel railcar looks like an amtrak amfleet coach with a desiel motor.
Moral of the story:
If it ain't broke...
Don't fix it.
The mistake they made was they did not build on the success of the RDC.
8:38 If those are where I think they are, I swear I've seen them as recently as 2018
Yeah they still pop up every now and then
2:33
hey i think there’s one of these in willimantic connecticut
Good train video
Good fish video
9:36 G-powered
Seems like if Budd tried to hard to one up the RDC with the SPV, if they would’ve just claimed it as the RDC 2 and done the bare minimum in the upgrading of the equipment and released it, I think it would’ve done better both in attracting buyers and mechanically
This rdc also looks like an amtrak metroliner, but it's desiel power instead of electric power.
It's like POWER RANGER mask.
What happened with the new Orleans cars?
There still around somewhere
How about the next episode would be either the f40ph-3c or shoreliners.
2:13 Locomotives
Do the f40ph or the geep
10:03 Twoarepreserved
9:34 hah!
I worked on SPVs almost exclusively from 1990-1993 at MNR. They were awful. 🤦😂
Good concept. Poor execution
The SPV2000 would have been a good train unit if it was reliable. Now we use European DMU cars.
4 Budd successful trains
M1-M3
R32 NYC Subway
RDC
Amfleet cars*non locomotive*
YAY I like it
8:07 didn’t help either
4:58
9:37 9:38
How about a new SPV-200/RDC type made out of Budd's Viewliner design? Try again, make a better design of diésel engines and modern microprocessors.... VIA still runs RDC's
It would be possible but now with Siemens and Saddler entering the US market more aggressively they could adapt one of their European DMU designs for use in the US.
Same old issue understaffed to save money
Unless they are used for Stepford County Railway, Grand Continental Railway, and on rare occasions, TVCTA Rail.
It’s known as the Hartford line not Springfield line
Depends on who you ask
Long story short, It failed because of a union.
No, but don't let that deter your spouting that tired wingnut narrative...
Clearly you didn't pay attention to the video. Name calling are we, keyboard warrior.
I imagine you are the know it all at your local HO model train club.
It failed because of a rule a union had that was eventually done away with but rather than wait the railroads removed the extra driveshafts before it was done
Ew what in the world is that
Only one of the most unreliable pieces of railroad equipment