Adding an MW car for the layout

I have long enjoyed learning about maintenance of way equipment, particularly for the railroad I model, the Southern Pacific, and making models of some of them. In fact, I recently published an article on the subject in Model Railroad Hobbyist, part of the continuing “Getting Real” rotating monthly column, in the issue for April 2025 (you can see it at: www.mrhmag.com ). 

One of the points emphasized in that article is that SP designated its work equipment, other than specialized equipment like cranes, spreaders, pile drivers, and so on, as either “roadway” cars, meaning cars that carried tools, equipment and supplies, and “boarding” cars, cars used by personnel to sleep, eat, or work in. Very much more about such cars can be found in Ken Harrison’s superb book (Southern Pacific Maintenance of Way Equipment, SPH&TS, 2022).

I already have a couple of interesting boarding bunk cars, but wanted to add another one. In a recent purchase of a group of freight cars, included was an old Train Miniature (TM) bunk car (these have been sold in more recent years by Walthers) . Though not a match to any SP photos of bunk cars that I have seen, it is certainly a similar kind of converted box car.

Shown below is the TM body molding. It is the window pattern that resembles but doesn’t duplicate any SPMW cars that I know of. 

I decided to prepare this car as a stand-in. I first sprayed the assembled car a boxcar red color, which is what SP used for MW cars in my era. Some details remain to be upgraded. 

I removed the molded-on sill steps you see above, and replaced them with A-Line Style A steps, and on the lateral running boards, added some corner grabs from a plastic kit. Also, surplus kit parts were used to add running board end supports. Canopy glue was used for all of them.

My next step was to letter the car, using the excellent MW decals from Owl Mountain Models, their set 1225S. You can see their home page at: https://owlmtmodels.com/ . The decal offerings are not currently on the site, which awaits refreshing, but you can purchase them by making direct contact.  

How were cars like this lettered? There was only an SPMW number, essentially arbitrary since newly-converted cars simply received a vacant number. Often a weight, sometimes light weight, was shown beneath that. This was usually over the right journal of the left-hand truck. Ordinarily to the right of car center, sometimes to the left, were the usual warning signs in English and Spanish. 

Below is an example ( photo from the Arnold Menke collection), taken at West Oakland of boarding bunk car SPMW 1109. It’s a former Class B-50-2 box car, number 84984, converted to bunk car in 1936. The car has arch-bar trucks, though SPMW cars rode on a very wide variety of trucks.

With decal lettering completed and protected by a coat of clear flat finish, I set about weathering the car. Since these cars were rarely if ever repainted, I decided I should apply a moderate amount of weathering. I followed my typical method of washes of acrylic tube paints (explained and illustrated in the “Reference pages” linked at the top right of this post). 

This boarding bunk car is now ready for service on my layout, visiting the outfit track in my town of Ballard (information about outfit tracks can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-role-of-outfit-track.html ) from time to time.

Tony Thompson