Viewed and heard the Rapido RDC at the Rapido booth today. These cars are beautiful and the sound is great. Well worth the price. The good news is that the sound decoder is a couple of months away from being offered separately. Those silent Proto1000 cars on the roster will soon come alive. I was too elated at hearing the confirmation the decoders were coming to think about asking the price.
This was at the TCA show in Denver, Colorado, which was a great show. ExactRail was there with very good show prices on their cars. A few of their B&O wagontop box cars followed me home. <W>

I saw the Rapido RDCs close up at Lin's Junction a couple weeks ago, along with photos on eBay. On my layout, the only stretch where passenger service would be feasible would be the short stretch of mainline through OLEY, past the yard, and through BELT up towards Pottsville/Newberry staging. Not enough quantity of run to justify the cost - I'll have to find some Proto units if I ever get the urge to run passenger service.

But they ARE beautiful, and if I was modeling a different part of the Reading I would have a handful on the roster for sure...

I'm somewhat relieved that I model the pre-RDC era and don't feel compelled to make the expenditure. I would love to see one in action though. Thanks for the early reviews, Evan and Tom.

I visited the Lin's Junction website recently and saw that they're closing. Very sad -- it was a great shop!

Yes - Lin's is closing at the end of April, but when I was there last week they were already pretty picked through - not surprising when everything is 25% off. They're the second hobby shop to go out of business - the other was Choo Choo Nuts in Lancaster which closed last week - I had the chance to go there when they were selling everything at 30% off and stocked up on quite a bit of material. Great savings, but I felt a little like a vulture picking over a carcass, even though I spent a four-figure sum stocking up on things that I'll need for the layout...

The Reading did test the RDCs on the suburban commuter runs finding what was expected, they couldn't protect the schedule. So they didn't stray from the service intended for them, replace the long haul,locomotive pulled runs after the mail/express contracts expired. As to ride, they had, what I consider, a much smoother ride than a coach with a gentle swaying action. My second to last RDC ride is fondly remembered as the trip from Reading to Philly for induction in to the military in June 1970. The last RDC ride was in Jan. 1974 from Philly to Reading on a pass (furloughed employee). Got a letter from Mr. Waters for a cab ride and was accepted by engineer, Joe Bozard(sp?). Yes, the RDC's acceleration was noticeably, and painfully, slower than an electric or loco pulled train.

I rode the RDCs several times from Reading to Philly as a kid, leaving from Franklin Street Station in Reading - by that time the Outer Station had been closed. The last time I rode in an RDC was back in the 1990s (1996 maybe?) when the RCTHS hosted the Berks County Museum Council's Living History Weekend - we had the Leesport Museum open and had the opportunity to run trains that weekend - in the rain. We had one of the Society's RDCs in the train and had the heat running, because it was a rainy weekend in October and it was so damn cold. At the end of it all, all the volunteers piled into the RDC for a final run (can't remember whether we went to Temple or Hamburg from Leesport) to warm up and celebrate what was a wildly successful weekend beyond our expectations.

Good times...