Budd-Michelin rubber-tired rail cars

The Budd-Michelin rubber-tired rail cars were a short-lived family of lightweight railcars that the Budd Company built in the United States between 1931 and 1933 from the French firm Michelin Micheline design, which ran on pneumatic tires. In September 1931 an agreement let Budd put the rubber rail tires under its shot-welded stainless steel bodies, and let Michelin enter the American market. Budd built two demonstrators, the 40-passenger Green Goose, driven by an 85-horsepower Junker diesel engine, and the smaller La Fayette, sent to France for testing, followed by four production cars: one for the Reading Company, two for the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Silver Slipper for the Texas and Pacific Railway. The Silver Slipper was a two-car, 140-foot train with a knife-edge nose and two 240-horsepower gasoline engines. All suffered from derailments and a bouncy ride, the Silver Slipper was scrapped by 1935 and the Pennsylvania cars, retrofitted with conventional trucks, in 1948. The failure pushed Budd toward the Pioneer Zephyr.