I am getting ready to weather an Athearn single dome tank car. The car is letter for Baltimore & Ohio. It is numbered for maintenance of way service. My question is what kind of load would a tank car in MOW service carry? Water? Oil? Would there be more than one car in a work train? Here is the unweathered version of the car.
Tom, I'm sure the MOW's would have had a few tank cars, in steam era, were for extra water known as "water bottles" for the loco, an one possibly for a steam crane, an then if any ballasting was done, a "wetter" car that was a modified tank car to spray water, to keep dust down..... PLUS in any case for oils an such (if your loco is oil powered), and or a diesel fule tender tank car for the diesel engines..... So, your looking at around 4 to 5 possibly 6 tankers if your going to run one long train, as I do.... HTH
The Rio Grande had quite a few company tank cars that were used as auxiliary tenders in the big steam locomotive era. They also used these cars to provide a scource of drinking water to railroaders and their families that lived and worked in remote parts of the system where there was either no local water available or the water was too mineralized to be palatable for drinking. The latest issue of the Prospector ( Jan. 2004 ) has a good article on these cars with several good photos of them. The Prospector is the magazine of the RGM&HS. Their web address is: http://rgmhs.drgw.org/
