Small project: an SP Boarding Bunk car

Among the interesting and, frankly, inspiring models I saw at the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society meet in Bakersfield at the end of October was a pair of ex-Pullman passenger cars, painted and lettered for service as maintenance-of-way bunk cars. (For more on that meeting, see my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-2023-sph-annual-meeting.html .) And for a connected series of posts on MOW modeling, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/08/modeling-sp-mow-cars-part-4.html .

A little background. As the traveling public gravitated increasingly to room accommodations in sleeping cars, in place of open sections, the very numerous Pullman 12-1 cars (12 sections, 1 drawing room) began to be less needed. Many were converted to other floor plans having rooms (taking advantage of the highly modular design of Pullman heavyweights).

Many others, however, were converted to “tourist sleepers,” as they were known, cars intended for economy travel. The drawing-room toilet compartment was sealed off, and the rest of that room converted to a 13th section. Pullman then gave these cars numbers in place of their previous names.

In 1948, a number of railroads, including SP, purchased a lot of these cars for use as maintenance-of-way bunk cars, in SP’s case, 78 cars. (As MOW cars, these were numbered SPMW 4800–4877.) The majority of these 13-section cars had never been air-conditioned, and most SP cars remained that way. Over time, many were modified and cut up in a variety of ways, making them look less and less like the original Pullmans, but in 1953, my modeling year, most cars like this would still have looked quite original.

Below is an example, SPMW 4814, an L..L. Bonney photo (Arnold Menke collection) taken at Truckee in July 1963. It’s from the superb book by Ken Harrison (Southern Pacific Maintenance of Way Equipment, SPH&TS, 2022). Ken refers to these Pullmans as the “third generation” of SP equipment like this, as all the ancient passenger cars and modified box cars previously used were wearing out and had to be replaced. That helps explain the SP purchase of 78 cars like this. On this car, the car number is not centered, but on many cars it was located at car center.

As mentioned at the top of this post, a model in the display at Bakersfield inspired me to pursue this project; it was by Todd Osterberg. It’s simply a Rivarossi 12-1 Pullman model, repainted with the body entirely in boxcar red, and the roof aluminum (though rather dirty, as no doubt happened rapidly). Here is Todd’s model. Having lots of window shades pulled down disguises the lack of interior.

My own project began with a Rivarossi (AHM) Pullman from my stash, bought years ago when these were on sale. It happened to be a model decorated for C&O, as you see here.

I removed the roof (which was black), masked the window glazing, and gave it a coat of gray primer. I then did the same to the car body. This avoids having to strip the paint, and adequately conceals the original paint and lettering.

With that paint well dried, I painted the roof with Tamiya “Gloss Aluminum” (TS-17), and the body and trucks with Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer (Oxide Red).” This latter color is a little more red than conventional boxcar red, but SPMW cars often looked a little that way, so in my view it’s a good choice. Note below that I’ve removed the “Talgo” couplers from the trucks. I will body-mount the couplers on this car.

Next comes lettering. As is evident in the Bonney photo at the top of the post, lettering was extremely simple. We SP modelers of the transition era have long used (and often cursed) Microscale set 87-155, as it has little of the correct size or style that we can use for MW cars. But now Owl Mountain Models has several very useful and accurate sets of MW decals (see them at: https://owlmtmodels.square.site/shop/1200-series-ho-decal-sets/5?page=1&limit=60&sort_by=category_order&sort_order=asc ). 

The new Owl Mountain set include very nice, clear versions of the iconic SPMW “Danger” warnings, which were in English and Spanish by the time I model. (For completeness, I will supply the English text of these warnings: “As these cars are liable to be moved at any moment, all parties are warned against lounging or sleeping under or near them.”) You can see these warnings to the right of center on the model below, and in the prototype photo at the top of this post.

One nice modeling challenge that isn’t necessary is diaphragms, as these were removed for MOW service. But still to come, the interior needs to be dealt with, and  I need to weather the car, hopefully as nicely as Jason Hill’s model shown above. Those issues will be presented in a future post.

Tony Thompson