Talk:Pioneer III

Thirty feet in width?

Maximum passenger railcar width in the USA is 10 feet 6 inches. A 30-foot-wide railcar would stretch over three tracks! Irishchieftain 22:33, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Length?

Is a 120-foot length OK? About 85 feet is usual for US coaches.--SilasW 10:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me the whole article could use a complete rewrite. It needs sources in a bad way—no sources are cited for the "six Pioneer III" cars described herein. 120 feet would be OK if it were a two-piece articulated MU (i.e. each articulated section being 60 feet long), but this type of railcar does not exist, even in PRR records. Further, "Pioneer III" refers to a type of railcar truck that was even used on Chicago L cars.

The PRR, IIRC, referred to the Pioneer III as the MP85, this being their first 85-foot long MU. The Pioneer III #246 from SEPTA at the Railroad Museum of PA has AAR couplers (not "copulars" as the last author misspelled it). Irishchieftain 21:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Railcar?

I've located a source of information on a Pioneer III, but this is described as a locomotive hauled coach. In the book New York Central and the Trains of the Future by Geoffrey Doughty one of the Appendixes discusses Budd's contributions to the attempts to redesign American trains to make them more competitive with cars & air travel.

The Pioneer III was a single coach prototype for what was planned as a much larger series of cars. It seated 88 and had dimensions 85 feet (length) by 11 feet 9 inches (height). No orders for coaches on this pattern originated in the United States beyond three sets of rail-cars for the Pennsylvania railroad. According to the website Brazilian Trains in Other Parallel Universes Pioneer III type cars were manufactured under licence in Brazil between 1963-1966 Graham1973 (talk) 00:35, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

• The prototype lightweight locomotive hauled coach only found buyers as an EMU in North America. The info on the coach and the Brazilian cars should be added to this article.Sturmovik (talk)

Missing photo P3front.jpeg

The article shows a mistake "220px" in red at top right. Apparently, a photo "P3front.jpeg" should appear there, but there is no such file on commons. Does anyone have such a picture? Teeschmid (talk) 10:07, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

References

@Sturmovik: I have Gerry Williams' book in front of me, and I cannot verify any of the cited material per your edit from 2012. Pages 46–98 correspond to the entire section on regional rail, but there's very little discussion of rolling stock in general or the Pioneer III in particular. Mackensen (talk) 23:22, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I won't have access to the book for a couple of weeks, but you have to read the entire section including photo captions. Info should appear in bits and pieces throughout the section.Sturmovik (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Usable information on rolling stock appears on pages 57 and 111 exclusively. Having now read all the image captions between pages 46–98 I can report there's nothing useful there. Mackensen (talk) 16:50, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Williams had this to say about the Pioneer III/Silverliner I, that I could find:

• Budd built six for the PRR in 1958. (p. 57)
• Five of them went to SEPTA. (p. 57)
• They're mechanically incompatible with later models. (p. 57)
• SEPTA considered but rejected push-pull coach conversion. (p. 57)
• Acquired the Silverliner I designation in 1974. (p. 57)
• Numbered 244-248. Seated 128. (p. 111)

Reading through the article history again and looking at [1], it seems as though citations were simply sprinkled in to what had been an unreferenced essay. I've just spent the last hour reading Williams very carefully (pages 46–98, and then also 111). Didn't see anything about PCBs holding up a conversion. Nothing about 249 being wrecked. Nothing about them being stored in Wayne Junction, or new Amtrak requirements after the Chase crash. Doesn't give 1987 as the retirement date. I don't claim that this information is untrue, but I do claim that I can't find it in the place where I'm supposed to find it, and I'm confused by that. Mackensen (talk) 17:04, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I added in referenced for the pieces of information you identified because people were complaining about the lack of references.Sturmovik (talk) 19:55, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't follow. Mackensen (talk) 20:09, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Coming back to this, the main paragraph in lightweight coach follows White very closely, although White doesn't say anything about ride quality. Mackensen (talk) 20:33, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Budd Silverliner which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:16, 11 August 2016 (UTC)