I was just tasked with an interesting piece of research, which I am hoping someone here can assist me with.

The Mississippi River dam in Keokuk, Iowa will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this June. In connection with this event, the Keokuk Union Depot Commission (a few blocks from the dam) is planning its own events, including (would you believe) a possible train ride over the Mississippi River bridge which is just down river from the dam. The trip would leave from the Depot, using a locomotive provided by the management of Keokuk Junction Railway (Pioneer Railcorp). The KJ, however, has no suitable passenger equipment.

A member of the Keokuk Union Depot Foundation has located some Budd dome cars that can be brought in and used for these trips. Our problem is that we don't know about dome car clearances through the bridge (a swing bridge, with a no-longer-used highway deck overhead). The City owns the bridge, so we can get that information easily enough. But we don't know the loading gauge information for the dome cars.

The person working on this (a BNSF engineer, no less) believes the Budd domes were production models and that the outside dimensions must be the same for all of them (particularly ex-CB&Q domes, which these cars apparently are). My question: where can we get dimensional drawings (loading gauge) for these domes?

I am sure somebody in RyPN can point me toward a source. Thanks for your help.

These are cars is good working order and the owner doesn't know the height? That would presumably be the best bet in case general info about Budd domes would prove to be inaccurate. That could be an expensive and potentially dangerous mistake. What if something changed the height over the years?

Steve

Let's see what I can find:

http://trainweb.org/DOMEmain/picCBQ4709b.jpg

Where this came from; note table below on dome heights:

http://www.trainweb.org/web_lurker/WebLurkersDOMEmain/

Cal Zephyr equipment diagrams and floor plans (index, with good looking reproductions of diagrams):

http://calzephyr.railfan.net/cars/plans.html

General site:

http://calzephyr.railfan.net/

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the links, which appear to provide the info we need. I have sent the links to the person in charge of the project. As for the owner of the cars being able to provide the dimensions, we realize that we have to check with him ultimately in case of any modifications. However, I understand there has been some difficulty in reaching him at this time, so preliminarily I have posted the query here.

I understand that the diagrams of the actual equipment in question have been provided to the appropriate parties.

Yes, thanks. If you have anything to add we would be grateful.