I like maintenance of way trains, since you can make a very interesting train that way. My mow train consists of a Lionel postwar steamer, a postwar 6 axle crane, gondola, hopper and caboose. All different road names, since I don't really care about it.
MTH does have a mow train with a dash 8, but no crane and no hoppers. Also K-line had an mow train with an mp15 in front of it. As far as memory serves me, it had a crane, but no hopper.
The mow train on my layout is not on the tracks normally. I use it when something goes wrong, like a big derailment. I had some cars and a crane car, all postwar, which where of no big use on the layout, so I put them together and gave it the name "maintenance train".
On the museumtrack right behind my house, they have a tiny diesel (type plymouth) with a few 2 axle flatcars and a car similar to a caboose (an old heating car from the dutch railways). Their steamcrane is in overhaul at the moment. On the cars they have ties, rails, switchfrogs and a bulk of trackbolts, the other 2 are used to transport the remains of maintenance (like trees fallen over the track, poles for fences etc) It's a nice little train and fun to watch.
To get everywhere on my layout I'm thinking about a sort of game with freight cars. Every freight car has an envelope and before you start the game, you randomly put a destination in each envelope. The detsinations could be "harbour" or "furniture company" or whatever company is on the layout. Then you open the envelope's to see what cargo you need to transport and form a train. The train runs a round across the layout, deliveres it's first freight car, runs another round, deliveres it's next, etc.
When the last car is on it's destination, you move the locomotive to the locomotive track and roll a passenger train. Afterwards, the freight cars have to be collected again and put back on the tracks they came from, using a locomotive. (just an idea, I don't have it in use yet)
Hello from a fellow DePaulian. I love MoW trains because they are so unique - almost anything goes - especially for the poverty-stricken interurban lines I am interested in.
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
Lionel collector, stuck in an N scaler's modelling space.
M.O.W stuff is very interesting to quite a few of us.
western depot has a M.O.W set that was a special run of k-line cars done for them and RMT has a m.o.w beep that would look cool pulling those cars.
a good book to read on the subject is Rrailway maintenance by Brian Solomon
I do the same, mixing roadnames is so much fun.
I have assembled a Frisco MoW set:
NW-2
6-axle crane
Flatcar with stakes
Searchlight caboose
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