Does anyone have a source for window gasket material for a pre-war Budd? Exterior gasket and the one that holds the the two pices of glass together inside the frame?

Thanks in advance.

Do you have a sketch or photos you could post of the gaskets in question? They may or may not be readily available, but there really isn't such a thing as "Budd style" gaskets since Budd was anything but standard from one car order to the next. There are a small handful of window sash styles that were used in Budd pre- and post-war equipment. A little more info would be helpful in determining availability.

The former Power Parts Co. (purchased by WABTEC) used to offer an entire series of passenger car window gaskets. Perhaps an inquiry to WABTEC would be of help.

A check of the 'Pocket List' might also yield a possible supplier. Adlake ?


Dave

I would also try J T Nelson. They supplied me with window gaskets, and if you find that you must have them made up, they can also make them. They will, however, be very expensive unless you need sufficent quantity.

I needed a car set of special gaskets made up for an RDC car, and the cost was very high.

Jim Gagliardi

When we did the restoration on the AT&SF dinning car Cochiti all the window glass and gaskets was replaced. As I remember we cut samples of the window gaskets and had it made this was about 1992 or so but it cost about $1000 for all the gasket material . Post war Budd was different from later. Places that make extrunded rubber products can make the gasket. Try ones the advertise in Hemming Motor news.

There was (is?) a firm called Restoration Specialties that supplied extruded rubber sections to the auto restoration hobby.

Longwood Elastomers is a supplier to the rr trade, although they seem specialize in molded products.

Yet another possibility is to search Thomas Register using the search criteria 'rubber extruders' or 'extruded rubber', etc.

While I almost hate to say it, I am sure that there more than a few outfits in China that can supply this item.

A good part of the expense for a made-to-order cross-section would be the creation of a die for the extruding machine. It might be possible to negotiate the cost of the die as a separate item so that you can retain ownership after the order is run.

Dave

Roanoke Chapter NRHS had a die made a number of years ago for the PS style window frame gasket. It is different from the original in that it is sized to fit a single pane of safety glass, rather than the original double pane. One of the local rubber suppliers can extrude batches as needed. I'm fairly certain that all 5 of the Chapter's operational cars have the single pane conversion.

Dave is correct. The company is Restoration Specialties in Windber, PA. Phone number is 814-467-9842, web site is www.restorationspecialties.com. Although they are primarily auto restoration folks, they have a good selection of glass setting channels.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Power Parts is now owned by General Electric, and if you are not a railroad , they will not deal with you; they will force you to use the non-railroad distributor, which is Logan Corp out of Huntington, WV.

Phone: 1-800-669-1967
Fax: 304-526-4777
E-mail: loganloco@logancorp.com

Their people can only be politely described as "ornery cusses". I have tried several of their telephone sales persons, and have been mislead and positively lied to by them. As far as gaskets go, if you do not have an OEM Power Parts gasket catalog from ten years ago, your are stuck; they have no idea what you are talking about; and I think they get no support from the Power Parts home office in Illinois. I went through all of this rig-ma-roll last year when rewindowing my Ann Arbor caboose at SRI.

I had been a steady, though not high dollar, customer of Power Parts since 1982.

I have the Weatherstripping and Extruded Shapes catalog in .pdf form from about ten years ago; any place we can post it?

Steve Zuiderveen

Some additional background:

Power Parts used to be a family-owned, service oriented aftermarket supplier of locomotive and car material. I believe that MK purchased PP from the Hausman family around the time that MK went into the business of supplying new rapid transit and commuter equipment. Recall that MK Rail purchased various other businesses- including some that supplied aftermarket EMD engine material.

A few years back, Wabtec sold off some of these assets that dealt in EMD material to GE Trans. I did not know that PP was part of the transaction.

Logan Corp ? This is how Logan does business:

I used to have a guy at GE Trans who would sell me Alco locomotive material directly. Due to the small size of the orders and the fact that all the items were MTO, I had to pay list price and deal with 6 week lead times. All and all-not a bad deal-for I was able to pay with a personal check. Delivery was consistently within the quoted leadtime.

When this fellow retired, I was informed that I would now have to deal with GE's locomotive parts distributor for short-line and industrial applications. This was Logan Corp.-who by the way, is a distributor for all types of industrial products-many of which are related to the mining industry.

The long and the short of it is as follows: a control relay that used to cost $300 with a six week leadtime myteriously doubled both in price and required leadtime when sourced from Logan. I couldn't help but notice that not only were they not interested in my business-there was nobody at Logan who was remotely conversant with GE manufactured locomotive material.

Dave