Passenger Car, Lightweight, Budd Full Dome Lounge

History: In the post-war period, passenger rail service boomed. In order to increase efficiency, the railroads set to replacing their old wood, steel and concrete heavyweight passenger cars with newer lightweight, streamlined cars. The new cars were made from stainless steel, aluminum and Cor-Ten steel. These cars required less motive power to pull and were cheaper to manufacture. Production was also concentrated in a few manufacturers rather than each railroad making its own. This led to standardization which further reduced costs. The new "lightweight" cars were also given "streamlined" designs to make them more visually appealing. Budd, Pullman Standard and ACF were all well known manufacturers of these cars.

Budd was well known for their corrugated cars (for which they held a patent). When Burlington inaugurated its vista-domed Kansas City and American Royal Zephyrs on the Chicago-Kansas City route, the Santa Fe responded by ordering full-length domes for several trains serving the same route. Although Pullman, which manufactured the Milwaukee Super Domes, proposed to make similar cars for the Santa Fe, the railroad turned instead to Budd to build its “Big Domes.”

Other than being fluted stainless steel rather than painted, the Big Domes superficially appear almost identical to Milwaukee’s Super Domes, but a close look reveals several differences. Upstairs, rather than arrange all the seats in coach formation, the rear part of the car had 18 lounge seats allowing for parties of three to eight to sit together. With the 57 coach-like seats, the dome had total seating for 75 (as opposed to 68 in the Super Domes)–more than three domes of the Kansas City Zephyr and American Royal Zephyr combined.

Railroad/Company: The Budd Company was a 20th-century metal fabricator, a major supplier of body components to the automobile industry and a manufacturer of stainless steel passenger rail cars, airframes, missile and space vehicles, various defense products.
Budd was founded in 1912 in Philadelphia by Edward G. Budd, whose fame came from his development of the first all-steel automobile bodies in 1913 and, in the 1930s, his company's invention of the "shotweld" technique for joining pieces of stainless steel without damaging its anti-corrosion properties.
Budd Company became part of Budd Thyssen in 1978 and in 1999 a part of ThyssenKrupp Budd. Body and chassis operations were sold to Martinrea International in 2006. No longer an operating company, Budd filed for bankruptcy in 2014. It currently exists to provide benefits to its retirees.

Read more on Wikipedia.