Budd vs. Pullman and St. Louis stainless construction

While Budd pioneered and patented shotwelded stainless contruction in the 1930s, Pullman and St. Louis would eventually build stainless cars of their own. In the 1950s, Pullman began producing stainless sheathed cars that were carbon based alloy with external stainless sheetmetal. These cars were prone to reaction between the different alloys. St. Louis Car would eventually build stainless cars in the late 1960s, using carbon alloy framing with stainless sheetmetal welded on the exterior, and again, these cars were known for rust out (see George Chiasson's details on the NYCT R44 contruction). Of course ACF never built stainless cars, having left the passenger equipment market in January 1961.

What interest me about stainless construction is how did the Silverliner IIIs and Arrow Is turn out to be the best of the stainless St. Louis cars, far superior in build quality than their NYCT counterparts (R38/R40/R40M/R42/R44)? These are among the few examples of St. Louis products with a build quality comparable to the caliber of Budd, which can be seen today as the Comarrow coaches have gone through a second overhaul and are running in Caltrans corridor service.

By the late 1970s, Pullman was also building true stainless cars (as opposed to stainless exterior sheetmetal only), as with the R46s and Superliners. I wonder by this point if Pullman developed its own stainless welding technology or purchased the license rights from Budd? Canadian Vickers, AVCO, Kawasaki and Mafersa would also purchase Budd production rights, and Bombardier would directly inherit these technologies when Budd closed down its rail division in April 1987.

Moderator's Note: I think I'll leave this here for a little while, but eventually we'll move it to General Discussion: Equipment.