Over the years, I’ve seen lots of variations on MOW cars, both in the real-world and in model railroading.
This may be a dumb question, but is it safe to assume that at least some of these cars were fashioned by the railroads from their aging cabooses, flat cars and passenger cars and equipped with floodlights, tool boxes, derricks, and clearance feelers? I would assume that cranes and boom tenders may have been bought off the shelf, but I am not so sure about some of the others.
Thoughts?
It’s probably safe to say that most MOW equipment and other Company service equipment was reassigned from revenue service, often with some degree of rebuilding. A flatcar or gondola could be built from any car with a flat floor, such as a boxcar or similar. PRR “standard” (if there was such a thing) MOW cars were typically rebuilt from XL, X23, X26, or X29 boxcars, or GR/GRa gondolas. The Westerfield catalog has a lot of PRR cars whose heritage can be traced back to XL’s, GRa’s, and X23’s. Snow plows, Jordan spreaders, pile drivers, and cranes were usually purpose-built, of course, but tenders for the pile drivers and cranes were usually recycled locomotive tenders. I can’t recall a purpose-built boom tender. They were invariably old flatcars or gons, modified for the purpose. Milwaukee Road mounted snowplows on heavily ballasted old gondolas, and used them instead of factory-built snowplows. Some roads did buy such things as Hart convertible gondolas, or hoppers with longitudinal doors for ballast service, but many other roads modified old hoppers or gons for MOW service. B&O cut down the sides of old steel hoppers for ash service. Quite a few roads cleared icicles from tunnel roofs by mounting a steel ice-cutter frame on an old hopper car and pushing it head of the loco. Old passenger cars were well insulated and had plumbing etc. installed, so it was easy to modify them for service as bunk cars and wreck crew dining cars.
It was all about saving money. After all, you couldn’t point to MOW service directly as an income producer, so the bean counters had to be convinced before they would release the cash. PRR used Battleship Gray paint on its work equipment after WWII, until about 1954 when they changed to yellow. I have heard (can’t confirm it) that decision was made because the road got a good deal on large stocks of war surplus Battleship Gray paint from the Navy. Waste not; want not.
Tom
Some old cars that are in museums now lasted long enough to be desireable to museums because they were in MOW service. Louis Hill’s private car, a woodsided car built with space for his automobile, was built around 1908 IIRC, and was in MOW service on the GN until the 1950’s or ‘60’s. I remember seeing 80’ woodside passenger cars being used in MOW or some other company service, still wearing Great Northern “Empire Builder” green and orange paint, on a BN train in 1984.
Thanks for the replies. Are there any good sources of photos of real MOW cars? Most of the online pix I find are models.
http://www.railcarphotos.com/Search.php has a search function for various types of MOW
fallen flags.
I have a few contributors that I follow at Flickr. If you have time browse there and you can come up with lots of good photos.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=maintenance%20of%20way
Here’s one that I recently came across:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lrmyers/31674708546/in/feed
At first I thought this crane tender was hacked out of a full baggage car but then I spotted the vestibule steps. Was it a combine? Or did the shop add the steps from a doner coach?
This equipment is at the Altoona Railroader’s Memorial Museum.
Have Fun! Ed
Thanks all.
This may be a dumb question, but does anyone know, are/were there circumstances in which a maintenance car could have ended up as part of a freight train for a certain distance? Or are they kept separate?
Sure, especially in remote areas of the West in years gone by. If a track gang was needed in a certain area for several days or more work, the railroad would not tie up a locomotive for that whole time, unless its power was really needed.
They would just tack the MOW equipment, including bunk and commisary cars, onto the end of a freight headed in the right direction. The freight would stop and switch the MOW cars into the nearest available siding or spur. They would be left there until the job was done.
CG
For a very good description of the wreck train on a moderate sized railroad, check out the Akron Canton & Youngstown Historical Society’s site and download a copy of the newest issue of the group’s online magazine. It was just posted today, and it’s free.
The article by Bob Lucas covers the equipment assigned to work/wreck service over the years, including the origins of the cars, modifications to them for special purposes, and their functions in the overal scheme.
You’ll find a lot of good ideas there.
Tom
MOW cars are a really neat niche in the hobby. As has been stated, real RR’s made MOW cars from what was available, so there really isn’t a wrong way to go. There’s been a few threads on here in the past about MOW equipment with photos, so check them out too.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/187081/2045172.aspx
In addition to railcars, there are neat models when it comes to MOW vehicles too, as our friends over at the 1/87 vehicle club have shown.
Yestdy I saw a picture of an old BNSF plug door box car stenciled “RAIL TRAIN BUFFER CAR”. Any old car could be reused for MOW service of some type.
Back in the steam and steam/diesel transition era the UP ran a “company service” train across Nebraska (and their other divisions). The local station agents sent their requests for forms, paper clips, lanterns or whatever to Omaha. The train would work its way west delivering office supplies, tools, parts, or coal for the stoves in the UP buildings. This train was also used to forward MoW cars from one place to another. So the train might look like a short freight train with MoW cars added ahead of the caboose. The coal was sent in gondolas and would be spotted at a siding. The local section gang unloaded the specified amount by hand and the gondola was forwarded to the next depot for them to unload their share, etc, etc. I imagine other railroads had a similar system for their company supplies.