Milw freight car drawings source?

[TinyTurner]

I am thinking of tackling scratch built freight cars and specialist MOW to see if I can, from very thin plywood ect.
Fit some MT trucks and couplers, think I could do it. 

Basically the 2mm associations equivalent of American boxcars.

Does it mean a monster trawl for the Milw stock list, asking dusty old book stores, of did the drawings get archived properly?
Good accurate scans would do. 

[Missaberoad]

Your question is very generalized, and how to proceed would depend very much on what specifically you are looking for.

It would be best to start with a specific car, number or series.

As far as resources the Milwaukee is very well represented and archived, however most of it is offline or in the back catalog of print magazines.

Cascade rail foundation has a large online archive, including freight car diagrams from the 1970s

https://research.milwelectric.org/SitePages/Home.aspx

The largest collection of Milwaukee Road archival material is held at the Milwaukee Public Library. They claim to hold over 50 thousand engineering drawing. Access is by appointment, and is advised that you know what you are looking for. There is a contact email, May be worth getting in touch with them.

https://www.mpl.org/archives/milwaukee_road_archives.php

They also have some digitized items online.

https://content.mpl.org/digital/collection/MilwRoad/search

Including this 1940 diagram book!

https://content.mpl.org/digital/collection/MilwRoad/id/6757/rec/2

A good resource would be the Milwaukee road and freight car groups on the groups.io message boards. Once again for the greatest success it helps to have pointed questions and know exactly what you are looking for information on.

Membership is free and well worth it in alot of ways.

https://groups.io/g/MILW

https://groups.io/g/MILWmodelers

https://realstmfc.groups.io/g/main

https://groups.io/g/MFCL

https://groups.io/g/railcarhistory/

Back issues of Model Railroader, Mainline Modeler and Railroad Model Craftsman would have the odd article with Milwaukee Road drawings. The former two are avaliable the latter one you would have to buy individual issues.

https://www.rrmagazineindex.org/

http://www.olimpia.com:8084/magazine-index.html

Occasionally engineering drawings and freight car diagram books come up for sale on ebay. The prices vary, I recently lost out on a set of Soo Line books that went for over a thousand dollars. But it's worth keeping an eye out for.

Hopefully this gets you started.

[TinyTurner]

Thanks, generalised is good for now to see what is out there.  I still have to learn what I would even need on a layout. 
I am mostly focusing on 70's-80' themes.
I have as yet to get any fancy tools to make parts, so a basic start.   

[randgust]

 Until about the 80's, Model Railroader and RMC always had drawings.   Kalmbach, at least, at one time made a real effort to put everything out there on a CD, and also index things.   RMC kind of came unglued as it changed hands.

If you were an era back, the best drawing book I've ever seen is the Kalmbach Model Railroad Cyclopedia; the big oversize blue hard cover.  That's a wow for sure; cars, diesels, steam, you name it.

Railroads themselves just did clearance diagrams for basic dimensions, mostly outlines, not model-grade design drawings.   Even for railroad-specific cars, finding a good set of drawings is basically because some modeler someplace took it upon themselves to actually draw it up in detail.  It's sad that that era no longer exists.   I can't remember the last time I saw an equipment drawing set in a magazine.

I've found some pretty good manufacturer drawings, although inconsistent, in some of the 1970's-80's Car and Locomotive Cyclopedias.

I scratchbuilt some freight cars out of styrene early in my N scale days, and basically concluded it wasn't worth it in the end.   I still have a couple, but it's a real effort to make anything that stands up to even marginal RTR quality.   It's really a lot easier to attack carbodies with a zona saw and make something more accurate, or now, draw something up and either have it printed or print it yourself.

Other than some of the oddball boxcars they built themselves, I'm thinking like most railroads, they bought essentially the same cars everybody else did from the carbuilders, finding the matching models is the challenge to repaint, detail, etc.   But if you were big enough you had at least one series of home-builts that identify your railroad as unique.  I'm thinking the rib side boxcars and cabooses for Milwaukee.

You're working WAY too hard if you're trying to scratchbuild a 50' PS standard boxcar......

The nice thing about MOW, particularly in the 70's, is that there wasn't really specialty cars - the railroads hacked up what they already had.   I model ATSF, and the most spectacular MOW bash they had was the 199376 rotary snowplow, built on crossing an older wood rotary with a 4-8-4 steel steam tender.   That got me an RMC kitbash award.   I crossed a dimi-trains rotary front end with a Bachmann tender body, scratchbuilt the cab, and put it on Kato RSC diesel trucks so it had electrical pickup.   And Santa Fe made boom tenders out of old passenger cars, no two were alike, and believe me, no drawings exist for any of that stuff.   Every car was a one-off.

[Pizzaparty]

Are those cd’s still floating around out there or is it becoming more like hens teeth

[OldEastRR]

There's a plan drawing and an article on making a Milw ribside 40' or 50' boxcar in the Sept 1989 MR. Odegard used a MTL PS-1 as his kitbash material. That certainly was distinct from all other boxcars.

[chessie system fan]

Except that Fox Valley released that boxcar, so there's no point scratchbuilding one anymore.  At this point in 2024, I can only think of two reasons you might want to scratch build a freight car out of wood.

1. The car in question is made of wood (caboose kits come to mind).
2.  Micro plywood is cheap and you just want to have fun.   

A composite MOW car would satisfy both reasons.  I believe that most Milwaukee composite cars were single sheathed. And I want to say that I've seen plans for a wooden Milwaukee boxcar in Mainline Modeler... somewhere. 

[TinyTurner]

I don't have all the cars I thought I would, all from different era's.  Can use some of them for detailing and repaints, it's what I had in mind anyway.
I'll try and hunt down older cars with pizza cutters to mod rather than butchering premium examples, but sometimes the price is right.

Hacking bits of wood is fun and there is plenty of wood, although this might be more towards the Maine narrow gauge construction and when I get to it.  It's like the Ffestiniog in America and just as quirky.  Always fancied a mine scene with handcarts on tiny track.  Build the bits you can't buy.

Association members have produced amazing work in British 2mm scale, don't know If I have seen anyone make boxcars.
Wood has the advantage of a natural grain, absorbs washes.

A Milw maintenance train would be a nice goal, there is a Jordan spreader on Etsy.  All my layout sketches have a MOW track, but no idea what would actually be on it. Lots of cool heavy gear to recover the numerous 'derailing incidents' there are pictures off 
I have an older Concor (I think) crane to mod when I went nuts buying what I 'thought' I would use before settling on one road to model (for now). 

In far future I would love to build 'F' scale stock with live steam and IC engines and it helps to work the skills to build up to it.
I wander If I could build a F scale box car for no more cost than a new N Microtrains car...