Southern Pacific Double Stack 125 Service Project

 Greetings All,

A more modern freight car project to report this week. A five unit set of Southern Pacific Double Stack 125 Service  well cars have been painted, lettered and put into service.

I had purchased two five unit sets of Athearn BB Gunderson Maxi III well cars many moons ago that pretty much sat dormant waiting for paint and decals. Last year I finally got the ball rolling 

In May 2020 I successfully painted a five unit set of Gunderson Maxi III well cars for my good friend Sir Neal's Atlantic Pacific Railroad.

This left me with one five unit set of undecorated Maxi III cars that I painted red about 20 years ago and never went further with them.

I came across this Microscale 87-745 decal set for the Southern Pacific Double Stack 125 Service set of Maxi III cars in December. I checked some online photos, liked what I saw and made the purchase.

The cars needed repainting and here they are drying after a trip to the Patti O Paint Shop which opened up briefly when the temperature hit the mid 70s. The color is rattle can Rustoleum Gloss Colonial Red.

It's time to start cutting the decals following the decal guide for each unit. This was time consuming magnifying glass work.

Not too bad!!!

 

Half way there!!!

The five unit set is now ready for service. This is the set as viewed from the coupler equipped A unit.

The B unit is on the other end of the five unit set and has a coupler on one end. 

 

The C unit is behind the B unit. 

Next comes the D unit which is the middle unit of the five unit set.

Then the E unit which is between the D and A units.

The coupler equipped A unit. The five unit set is considered a single car and is built in the A-E-D-C-B configuration. 

The newly painted SP Maxi III set is loaded and at the head end of this four car or twelve unit set of Maxi III units. 

This makes up my entire double stack fleet and right now is about the maximum I can run on the layout without issues. The cars are very light and top heavy so I plan on adding weight to the bottom containers.

The stack train rolls thru the layout

This was gratifying project that I'm glad to have finally undertaken and completed. I was skeptical of the decals due to their age and thankfully that turned out to be a non issue. 

While the project is not in my wheelhouse of layout operations I've always liked this type of freight car and will enjoy running it.

You know some of us New York Central fans like to believe these Container on Flat Car (COFC) stack trains were the culmination of the NYC Flexi Van trains that hauled containers on specially built spine cars. 😉

Thanks for reading and watching!!!

See ya soon!!!