Again in the issue for April, Model Railroad Hobbyist’s “Running Extra” segment contains one of the multi-author “Getting Real” columns by me. This one is about Southern Pacific maintenance-of-way equipment, or as SP designated it, “MW.”
One reason for my having a particular interest in MW equipment is that I provided a spur track for it on my layout. At various places around the railroad, SP designated certain tracks as “outfit” tracks, meaning that the equipment of an MW gang could be located there during a work period, whether a track gang, signals gang, or bridge and building gang.
This offers an interesting facet of layout appearance and operation: various models of MW equipment may be found on such a track from time to time, and not only may this equipment move to and from the outfit track, but also carloads of tools and materials (termed “T&M” by SP) can be set out and picked up there.
The photo below shows the outfit track in my layout town of Ballard, and it contains, at left, two boarding bunk cars, as they were called (one obviously converted from a Pullman car), as well as an empty ballast car being picked up at right.
Modeling of the cars in the photo above has been described in previous blog posts: for the conversion of the Rivarossi Pullman model, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/11/small-project-sp-boarding-bunk-car-pt-2.html ; and for the Class W-50-3 ballast car at right, you might wish to see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/09/building-dry-creek-ballast-cars.html . The middle bunk car is described in the MRH article.
The cars in the photo represent two of the three types classified by SP. Those were “boarding” cars, meaning cars that employees (and in some case their families) would live, eat sleep or ride in; “roadway” cars, meaning cars carrying T&M for the gang’s work; and certain types of cars in revenue-service number series, mostly ballast cars, that could also carry revenue loads.
Below I illustrate an MW roadway car, which were usually revenue-service cars that had completed their lives in that service and handed down to the maintenance forces. Usually these were give modest repairs and repainted into an MW scheme, but sometimes they were simply “patch painted” with their new reporting marks, even leaving intact the railroad emblem from the previous paint scheme.
Another topic of the MRH article was to describe modeling a few of the revenue-number-series ballast cars. I recently showed in a blog post my completion of paint and lettering for one of the “Bruce’s Train Shop” resin hoppers, sold assembled, as a representative of SP’s more modern steel ballast hoppers. Shown below is one described in a blog post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/05/another-sp-ballast-hopper.html ).
Finally, I have enjoyed building the two Class W-50-3 ballast cars from Dry Creek Models, as I’ve described in blog posts. The most recent one was chosen largely so that I could build a load of rail for the car, as I’ve presented fully (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-rail-load-for-my-dry-creek-ballast-car.html ).
I concluded my article by mentioning that these various MW cars can be included in the work of an operating session by using appropriate waybills to direct their movement, in many cases to and from the outfit track. My experience on many layouts I’ve visited is that MW equipment is simply a static display, maybe on a back track of a yard, and isn’t moved as part of operation. But it’s something I’ve enjoyed doing on my own layout.
Tony Thompson
No comments:
Post a Comment