Help Dating a N&W Boxcar

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Jeffrey, Ole Bean: 

Those things were everywhere in the old days. MW used them to store tools (which had to be locked up so they didn't grow legs) and other materials like rock salt, switch heating oil, etc, which had to be kept out of the weather. The Signal Dept used them to store crossarms, insulators, rolls of wire, wooden insulator pins, and other materials relating to their work. The Car Department used them, too, for storing car repair materials, oil, etc. A number of places had steam engine tenders which had been converted to hold water or, in some cases, oil (kerosene.) 
Some of these "MW cars" moved around with gangs, and some seemed to have been "permanently retired in place" for storage purposes, appearing as if they had not been moved for decades. Some of the old boxcars used in such service had holes cut in the ends, and "man doors" installed. 

I think the vernacular generic term for this mish-mash of old non-revenue equipment might have been "tool cars." 

It is my understanding that the railroad owned few big trucks for maintenance service prior to the early/mid-1950, so if the material moved, or had to be stored, the MW "tool cars" did the job. 

These cars were so homely that few people were interested in wasting their film them. 

When I hired (1964,) the painting of this "MW Equipment" (as it was termed) was in transition. Most of the older cars (which included converted old Pullmans used for bunk, office and dining cars on the MW gangs,) were still painted a light cream color. The newer rebuilds/repaints/whatever were painted in dark green. I think Portsmouth must have been the location charged with upgrading this type equipment, for all the COT&S dates and paint codes I observed showed "PO." I think there may have been a brief transition period in which some of the "MW cars" were painted a very light grey. By the time I left the N&W in 1979, all the old cream-colored paint schemes had disappeared, supplanted by the green paint scheme (e.g. the wreck train equipment,) and all the old wooden boxcars used in "MW service" were probably gone, too. 

Wish I had paid more attention... and taken some photographs. 

Here at Enola, the Signal Department had, up until the mid-1990s, an old wooden pre-1920 PRR class X-29 boxcar, painted yellow (standard PRR color for work train and wire train cars) and equipped with arch bar trucks and a staff brake, and used for storing their materials. I went in it several times and found rolls of wire, crossarms and other pole line materials, armstrong levers out of old interlocking towers, and even a three-piece Union Switch & Signal table interlocking machine. I tried to interest the local NRHS in speaking up for the by-then rare old X-29, but nothing happened. As I recall, a local scrappie was called in to cut it up "in place." 

-- abram burnett 
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