By Eric Berger

The Budd RDC-1 built as New Haven 41 is returning to service at the age of 70 this weekend when it debuts on the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum with runs between Adams and North Adams, Mass.  The 90-seat car will make Hoosac Valley runs at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. October 28 and 29, with non-narrated Past Peak (Foliage) Train Rides Saturday and Halloween Costume Train Rides on Sunday. The Halloween runs are family-friendly, with no scary surprises. Tickets can be purchased online.

The well-traveled “Budd car” is one of five RDC cars leased to BSRM by the Budd RDC Foundation earlier this year. The car arrived in early September after years in storage in New Hampshire on the Hobo Railroad, along with former Baltimore & Ohio 1960, an RDC-2, and the three surviving cars from New Haven’s Roger Williams, including both of the unique cab cars. That trainset is now on display at the BSRM station in Lenox. Jim Gagliardi is president of the Budd-RDC Foundation, which owns the cars.

A successor to Budd’s pioneering Zephyr streamliners, a total of 398 RDC variants were produced between 1949 and 1962.  The Roger Williams units were produced at Budd’s Red Lion plant near Philadelphia in1956, when New Haven was experimenting with lightweight trains and the cabs at each end were designed to resemble the Fairbank-Morse P12-42 which powered the John Quincy Adams as well as Boston & Maine’s Speed Merchant. Low-slung and faster than its RDC brethren, it was a prototype for a new breed of light rail vehicle at a time when the nation was turning away from rail.