MofW

Technically none of the cars in the first photo are "MOW" cars.  That's a wrecker consist.  Those cars belong to the Mechanical department, the same people who repair cars and engines  The MOW department is the Engineering department, they take care of the track, bridges, buildings and signals.  Kinda like calling a fire department pumper truck a police squad car.

The ex-passenger cars are used as tool cars, mechanical employee rider cars to get them to the wreck , have bunks to rest shifts of employees during the wrecking operation, and the most important car in the consist, a diner that makes coffee and food for the people working the wreck.

The cars labeled as bunk cars are MOW dept. cars.  They the home away from home for a track or bridge gang.  The wrecker is only called out if there is a wreck (or something really heavy to pick up), is only out while the derailment is being worked, the rest of time it sits on standby at the mechanical facility.  The bunk cars are assigned to gang working on the track or bridges and they are moved from project to project, tied up on  siding or track near the job site, and could be there for weeks or months until the project is done.

There are two other cars that are part of a wrecker consist, a car of track panels (those are the last four cars in the ATSF wrecker consist) and they will probably have a car or two of ballast.  The panels and ballast may be provided by the engineering department (MOW) but the consist is managed by the mechanical department.

The silver baggage car, ATSF 19080, is an interesting car, it is a car designed to carry theatre scenery.  The end of the car has doors (you can see the hinges) so the long narrow flats of stage scenery could be loaded endwise into the car.  They were a very rare type of car.

Interesting!

Now I'm wondering whether I should create a "wrecker" consist instead of a M.O.W. consist.  Wouldn't make a considerable difference to the types of equipment I would have to model.  It would be more of a matter of quantity.  It would mean a shorter consist with less tie-and-rail flatcars in comparison to the number of crew cars.

So the "theatre" car sounds interesting, but does it actually have any relation to M.O.W. or wrecking services?  I'm guessing it doesn't.  Sounds interesting, though.  Did they use it to entertain the workers?  Or was there some other purpose?

Theatre Car

No, that's what it was originally built for, long before it was retired and pushed out of regular passenger service and reassigned to the wrecker or MOW crews.

Baggage Car

I think you  are misunderstanding.

In a Broadway play, the scenery flats are wooden frames about 6 ft wide and 20-30 ft high, then attached so they cover the full width of the stage as a backdrop.  There is a backdrop for each major scene.   They hang from the ceiling and to change scenes they winch the backdrops up and down.  There are also scenes that are rolled up like big canvas window shades 30-40 ft wide.   All of these are hand painted.  Rather than paint new scenery every time the show moves from city to city the backdrops are disassembled or rolled up and shipped by rail to the next town.   That's what those baggage cars were designed to do.  Have end doors to allow scenery pieces 6 ft wide and 30 ft long to be loaded into the car.

The car is NOT a theatre, its a baggage car to ship theatre scenery.

The reason its in work train service is its a baggage car with a big open floor, probably a low mileage service car and was retired early.

There are "theater cars", but they are business cars where the back 10-20 ft has a sloping floor and tiered seats (theater seating) all facing out the back and the rear of the car is a glass wall.

Trains

They are two completely different trains with very different cars on them.

A "classic" wrecker train has the wrecker, a boom car, a tool car, a rider car, a diner, a car of trucks and wheels, a car or two of panels (or rail and ties) and a couple cars of ballast.

A MOFW train could have lots of different consists.  For gang it would have the bunk cars, dining car, water cars, tool cars and then a whole series of flat cars with all the gang equipment on them (tampers, spikers, tie handlers, regulators, adzers, spike pullers, etc).  If its a bridge gang it would have a smaller contingent of gang cars, a bridge crane (NOT a wrecking crane) and a boom car or flats with the crane attachments.  Ballast and rail trains are just ballast and rail cars.  A material distribution or pick up train would be a Burro crane on a flat car with a series of gons on either side of the crane flat.

Looking forward to your MOW build.

These look like great projects.  Looking forward to seeing your progress.

If a wreck destroyed a section of the right of way,

what sort of consist would be used?  Would a wreck train go out to clear the right of way and then a second MOW train be sent subsequently to get the right of way repaired, or would both go out together?  I'm presuming a situation where only a short section of rail was damaged and not miles of replacement track was required. 

Wrecker

Era dependent.  

If its a post WW2 era pretty much, the wrecker would have a car or cars of track panels. The track panels are put in place like Snap Track to get the main track open.

One thing that most modelers don't think about is that a wrecker is a crane mounted on the RAILS.  There has to be track there to move the crane up close to the derailed car.  Once you rerail a car, the track has to be fixed where that car is enough to move the wrecker up to the next car.

If they don't use panels then the wrecker outfit might have a car like the DRGW car above that has the platform above the flat car deck.  Rails would be on the deck and ties on the platform.  The track gangs would have to unload ties and rails to built track, if the previous track was too damaged to be reused.  The crane moves up onto the repaired track.  Rerails a car.  The gangs build up another rail length of track.  The crane moves up.  It rerails or clears the next car.  The gang builds up another rail length of track.  The crane moves up. Etc until finished.

After the cars are rerailed, they will bring in gangs or tampers  to surface the track.  At some point later they will bring the wrecker back out to pick up the destroyed or cleared cars.  If they installed panels or reused the rail and ties they will come back weeks or months later and relay the rails (and/or ties) to get rid of the even joints in the rails from the panels.

What would they have carried ballast in?

Would the Santa Fe have used ordinary hoppers, or would they have dedicated M.O.W. ballast hoppers or gons?

Hoppers

Either.  Since the ATSF had a gazillion Caswell GS gons, maybe a gon just because that's what they might have a lot of.  The problem with a GS gon is it dumps stuff outside the rails and for ballast you want it to dump on or between the rails.  Wrecker ballast might sit for months under load so its a really poor utilization of the car.

To unload ballast from a regular hopper you put a chain around the hopper door latch and chain it to the side of the car so it won't pen all the way, then you put a railroad tie across the rails in front of the wheels of the truck behind the hopper door.  Bust open the door and pull the train at a walking speed.  The ballast dumps out and the tie smooths off the pile.

All this information is very useful, but it might be a while...

All this information has been very useful, but I am afraid that we do not currently have a lot of equipment on hand and that we will have to wait until I can attend a swap meet or such like before I can start.  At $20+ per piece of equipment (including shipping), the idea of purchasing all new equipment on the internet hardly seems feasible to my plans.  If I do work on anything in the near future, it will probably be the crane.  Perhaps I'll even start a new entry to the blog to summarize future work.  (perhaps).

Thanks for all the useful information you have given me regarding M.O.W. and wrecker consists.  I'm sure it will be very useful.

UPDATE: same idea, different road/gauge, more info required.

I'm now starting to take this idea of a M.O.W. fleet in yet ANOTHER direction (something I appear to be really talented at).  Me and my dad have been carefully considering the idea of getting out our stash of On30 locos and rolling stock and resuming work on the long dormant JC&DPC Quarrels Slate Quarry module (2.5x8) and a long, skinny 8-foot long connector module (plus another possible module currently in the planning stage), and, all things considered, I thought it might be interesting to scratchbuild some On30 D&RGW M.O.W. cars (thanks to some inspiration from  abelida, who has started a similar project in HOn3).  I know that I probably can't make a plow (rotary OR gunnison), a jordan spreader, a steam shovel, flanger, or derrick, which leaves me with very few options.  What would a transition-era D&RGW narrow gauge M.O.W. consist look like, what would the key cars be, and how many could I make primarily from wood?  (and would it be possible to assemble a gunnison plow using wood and an individually packaged plow part?)