Carbodies and Carbody Ends

Are the ends of the M1/M3 made out of fiberglass? Do they have to be repeatedly painted? The rest of the M1/M3 carbodies seem to be made of stainless steel. Are the M7/C3/DE/DM made of only stainless steel?

Im pretty sure there all stamped out steel. with firberglass components and such. im not 100% sure tho.

Fiberglas, and yes, they do need painting on some regular basis. When they hit things or have objects thrown at them they crack like a nut.

Then they're often repaired with stainless steel tape or duct tape or self stick advertising posters or whatever else is handy.

Clem

I just love thoes Budd cars that lead with advertisement and stainless tape on the nose. its just great, one of a New York kind.

I was also wondering if the M-1/3 cars were monocoque, like the BART cars. It appears the M-1/3s have their entire body welded of stainless panels with no separate underbody support bolted or riveted underneath.

The M-1 carbody is mostly conventional, well, conventional for Budd hehehehe.

There wasn't anything magic about it - Budd knew what they were doing, and they tended to be VERY good at it.

Besides, the M-1 sounds impressive until you see the specs on the Pioneer III cars - a full 11kv AC powered railcar that was *lighter* than the M-1s, and met AAR / ICC standards. The kicker was a really cool right angle drive and 6500rpm traction motors (!). The right angle drive didn't work too well though...

Then there were the origional unpowered pioneer cars for the PRR - full length, AAR / ICC (this was the 50's) compliant intercity car - 52,000 lbs.

Budd's trick was a decently strong stainless alloy (they claimed 50% reduction over carbon steel from that alone), a good design, and their 'shotweld' process, which yielded very strong welds. And they had a few good engineers (I have a 60's vintage paper presented by one where they talk about body hung TMs, AC inverters, and high speed DMUs as thing comming in the future. This was in the *60's*.

It's a shame they got out of the business. IIRC, it was BBD undercutting them on the R-62s for NYC that more or less popped them out for good...

Main Entry: mono·coque
Pronunciation: 'mä-n&-"kOk, -"käk
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from mon- + coque shell, probably from Latin coccum kermes -- more at COCOON
1 : a type of construction (as of a fuselage) in which the outer skin carries all or a major part of the stresses
2 : a type of vehicle construction (as of an automobile) in which the body is integral with the chassis .


The M1's do have trusses inside the frame and are there for not monocoque, The Genesis is however and is constructed like an automobile with pre formeed sections giving it its strenght.

Thanks for the clarification. I assumed the M-series cars were monocoque becuase they appeared to be welded into one unit, with no room for a underframe truss support underneath.

If you look closely at the skin on an M-1, you will find that not only are there those dot welds where the stainless panels are overlapped and connected, but you will see dot welds in the field areas of the stainless panels. Those particular dot welds are where the panels are welded to the supporting ribs.

I'm sorry if I didn't understand correctly.

The M7's ,DE/DM's, and C3's have fiberglass ends? Does the FRA allow this?