Rural Roger Williams.
The Roger Williams was a 6-car experimental trainset built by Budd for the New Haven Railroad in 1956. The cars were a variant of the company's widely successful Rail Diesel Car (RDC) diesel multiple units, with the end two cars featuring locomotive-style cabs - a feature no other factory RDCs had. After a few years in service between Boston and New York City, the trainset was split up and intermixed with the rest of the railroad's RDC fleet and continuing on through Penn Central and Amtrak operation before being retired in the 1980s. Three of the six cars were preserved by a private owner at the Hobo Railroad in Lincoln, NH, and in 2023 ownership was transferred to the Berkshire Scenic Railroad Museum in Lenox, MA. On Saturday, July 20, 2024 the cars were hauled by the Housatonic Railroad from Lenox to North Canaan, CT for display during the annual Canaan Railroad Days event. Knowing the trip with the historic cars would be popular with photographers, the museum and railroad graciously arranged a handful of photo stops along the way during which the locomotives were uncoupled, allowing for scenes with the remaining trainset alone!
