Silverliner II And IV Look-Alike Feature (Trivia Question)

Other than the fact that the Silverliner IV's have the hump on the roof, center door plug, and lack letterboards, what feature do they have that the Silverliner II's also have that makes them both look "a little" similar???

Um, stainless steel, pans and couplers?

Pretty much it there, Mike. The trucks are different, the control groups are 'somewhat' different. Oh yeah, the body's different too heh.

As for the Arrow III and SL IV cars - the OEM GE manual for them is the same, NJT's version just has the dynamic and voltage change guts crossed out (or more likely, not there, though I've been told the sections in the book litterrally ARE crossed out heh)

I'm assuming you mean Arrow II and not Arrow III.

The interiors of the IV and II are also different. The SL IV's have electric sliding doors compared to the swing doors of the II. The IV's are also about 6 inches wider overall. The only other thing that makes them look a little simular is the oblong windows.

I'll check, but I'm pretty sure it's the III that's a SL IV clone sans dynamics.

The answer I am looking for is: The windows.
The ends of each of the Silverliner IV's windows, like the Silverliner II's, are rounded (which I pretty much call "racetrack" shaped), unlike the more common rectangular windows found on the Silverliner III's, push-pull cars and most other passenger railcars.

Oooooookay...

Everyone: You all left out the origination of the look that you all talk about: The Budd Pioneer I - the original 6 from 1958. At least two of them have been saved at the RR museum of PA. but the other three-were they wrecked on a test by the USDOT at Pueblo? One I recall was wrecked or destroyed early on but the remaining 5 were retired arond 1980 I recall? OR the ORIGINAL car that was built as a prototype by Budd in the mid 50s - the 5880 that included the body design for the Silverliner I and II and was I recall converted into GT-1 and then GT-2 Turbine Car tested on the LIRR in 1967 and 1970 respectively. Does this car still survive somewhere today? And if so,in what form? Observations from MACTRAXX

There's a few Pioneers at Pueblo as testbeds. They wrecked one, the others were bumped into a wall, and still stayed pretty much intact, hollow axles and all. that v alidity of any of the tests is a big question - stripped of the propulsion group and interior, those cars weighed almost nothing - under 40,000 lbs. A usable database would have come from crunching the LIRR's M-1 fleet with everything intact instead of just scrapping it. The DOT testing is cute, but history shows that you need a LOT of crash test data before you can reasonably model stuff, and a LOT more afterwards to validate your models. Look how many cars GM, etc smashed from the 50's onward - it wasn't until the 80's that passenger automobiles finally stopped being deathtraps.

I suspect the unpowered P III cars are all gone, as are just about all of the lightweight experiments. It's a shame too - Budd was equaling the per seat weight of lightweight aluminum cars with those things.