Here's another one of those seemingly out of left field questions (apologies for the baseball reference for those who aren't into baseball): Would it be prototypical for a railroad to have used a heavyweight coach and a baggage car as part of an inspection/maintenance train for the mid 70s to early 80s era? I picked up a Rivarossi heavyweight coach as part of a passenger car lot that I used the rest of the cars as part of a museum display. This car has a very nice interior and has lighting included. My thinking is possibly getting a heavyweight baggage and turning it into a track cleaner car. I have seen kits for turning boxcars into cleaners. I already have a Tyco caboose work car that I have upgraded that I would use for the train.
It wouldn't be unusual for a railroad to use old passenger cars in Maintenance-of-Way service. In the 1980's I saw a work train on the BN using woodsided passenger cars still painted in Great Northern green and orange.
I might be wrong, but I don't think an inspection train is the same thing as a MOW or work train. I think of an inspection train more as a train where a bigshot (superintendent, V.P. etc.) and his private car go along the division in a train to check out how things are working. It might be tacked onto the end of a regular passenger train, or might be a separate train with passenger cars for other railroad officers / officials, secretaries, etc. It wouldn't use a caboose or include MOW cars.
Stix,
I agree, as I saw old passenger cars in MOW service still into the 1980s. After that, they got pretty thin, probably because of stiffer requirements for accomodations, pollution control, etc that required upgraded facilities for workers away from home.
Your point on the cars being different in MOW vs inspection/executive train service is a good one. MOW stuff was maintained, but certainly nothing too fancy. Inspection trains hauling the brass around tended to be much classier stuff, with good paint, updated facilities and equipment, etc. Sort of like the difference between a used Mercedes and a $1,000 car.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I agree as well, as late as 1982 SF had several former heavyweight cafe observations in the Barstow MW outfit along with additional heavyweights of various configurations to include a number of 70 foot 4 trucked observation cars which I believe were used as official cars once upon a time.
Dave
The inspection function and the maintenance function are separate and rather unequal. Inspection involves looking for problems using anything from track speeders (or hi-rail pickup trucks) to dedicated locomotives (RDG's cute little 2-2-2T has been preserved) to specialized hi-tech equipment (Sperry railcars and their more recent descendants.)
Once the problems have been identified and documented, then the MOW forces are deployed. At one time, this meant gangs of laborers (who would ride to work in whatever passenger stock had been relettered for MOW) and carloads of track workers' tools. These days it's a corporal's guard of workers who ride to work in the cabs of specialized machines that do the actual lifting, shoving, spike pounding...
Modeling the period just before the advent of all that specialized equipment is easy. Modeling anything more recent...
In Japan in 1964 all that fancy stuff was a puffball on the horizon. By 1974, it was ubiquitous.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Dropping the inspection train part of my question, would a regional short line in the mid 70s to early 80s even have a maintenance train with passenger cars in it? Some of the responses have me wondering if I would be right in even having the maintenance train as described.
As to the configuration: If a train as discussed is valid for my era, am I also correct that a maintenance train would have at least one boxcar(or in the alternative, an old baggage car) for tools and a gondola for rail as my era still used jointed rail? Another thing that I don't remember off the top of my head is how long (scale) the rail would be for that purpose.
The standard for rail length was 39' for a long time. I have the impression that it might have doubled, more recently.
Railroads don't run "maintenance trains". They distribute men and equipment to do jobs. So, first a job needs to be identified. Sometimes it's tie replacement. Sometimes it's constructing a new siding. Sometimes it's installing a new signal.
First you have to identify a task.
Then the equipment is assembled. It may well be delivered to the job site by train. There may be bunk cars and a kitchen involved. Or there may not. There may be a need for a pile driver. Or there may be a need for a Jordan spreader.
Anyway, there is not a once-size-fits-all maintenance train.
Ed
I think the number and type of cars would depend on what the train is meant to do. In recent times, minor repairs like fixing a rail joint or maybe replacing one section of rail can sometimes be done just by a couple of workers and a hi-rail vehicle. On the other hand, if your railroad has decided to re-lay all the rails on the Mountain Division (where there are no cities with hotels/motels) they might bring a longer train of equipment, along with bunk cars for the workers.