You could fabricate the step from brass strip, and insert into holes drilled into the skirting.  You could use a knife or square file toward the outside edge of the holes, to square them up so the strip could be glued all the way at the edges. Cover the rest of the holes with styrene strip representing the brackets.  Add bolt detail to the brackets after they're installed.

You need flat brass wire... and all you need to make that is round brass wire, a anvil, and a hammer. A few taps, and you're done.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I will post pictures of my first attempt soon.

Dave

These are the parts I will be using for the stirrup steps on my Meadowlark passenger cars.  The metal stirrups are from A-Line and is their style A.  The Grandt Line parts will be used to simulate the nut/bolt attachment to the car.  I will drill holes through the skirting to attach the metal stirrups.

The placement of the stirrups will appear as such.

The non-door end gets a regular stirrup.  The door end will get a bent stirrup.  They were bent due to the lack of mounting space on the door end of the car.

I am now working on developing a drilling template so that all the stirrups will be in the same location.

Dave

In the Train's issue covering Trains of the 40's, there is a picture of the Meadowlark's sister streamliner, the Whipoorwill, heading north out of Terre Haute.  The rear car is the round observation car the Chicagoland.  

This image gives a clear indication of how the blue and orange would have looked back in the day.

Dave

Finally got the non-vestiblue end stirrups installed on the four passenger cars.  

I started by creating a jig to mark the holes.  The jig is strip styrene that has a bottom and side edge to act as a stop for the template.  The jig is reversible so as to mark holes on each side of the car.

The middle hole is an opps.  

I drilled the holes at a 45 degree angle through the skirting.  

I bent the stirrups at an approximate 45 degrees to go through the holes drilled in the bottom of the skirting.  

I applied AC to the back sides of the stirrups to attach to the car body.

Here are the ends I currently have finished.

My plan is to add the bracket ends of the Grandt Line stirrup steps.  However, when I was trying to cut of the mounting pin and remove the part from the bracket I found that the little pieces enjoying flying off into the great unknown, never to be seen again.  Therefore, I need to re-examine that part of the process.

Next is to form the vestibule end stirrups and attach them in a similar manner.  

Dave

I am glad you solved your stirrup issue. Looking forward to the final stages of the build of this train. This is one of the best non-MRH issue builds posted on here. 

Thomas Gasior 

To cut off the Grandt Line bits get a large clear plastic bag and stick your hands inside. You can see what you are doing and the bits are contained.

@ Thomas,

Thanks for the nice comments.  It is amazing how life can get in the way of this fun hobby!

@ Graeme,

Thanks for the awesome idea of cutting the parts inside of a bag so that they won't be lost in the great beyound.  Appreciate the suggestion.

Dave

Taking OKGraeme's suggestion, I used a plastic bag to help catch the cut away mounting brackets from the Grandt Line stirrups.  They are very tiny pieces and getting more difficult to see by the day for my midlife crisis eyeballs!

I then used plastic cement to attach the mounting brackets to the insides of the stirrups.  I later realized that the prototype had to bolts per bracket and the pieces I cut off only have one bolt.  But, if anyone notices, they will have had to look an awfully long time to find it!

Can't tell yet if the effect was worth the effort and risk of damaging my eyeballs or not.  I am hoping that because the streamliners had such smooth sides that any extra detail will pop out in the models.

Next is finish the vestibule end stirrups.

Dave