SP HW 72-D-3 Cafe-Lounge & Diners from MDC Kitbashing (Part 1)

This is the second post in my series of MDC Food-Service Kitbashes, specifically this time on the 1937 Cafe-Lounge conversions of the 72-D-3s.  Last time I started with the 77-D-2 Dining Cars (Part 1), and the odd-ball car of that class which was converted to a unique Cafe-Lounge pilot conversion in August 1936 of SP 10910, about six months before these cars were converted in 1937.

Right side of my SP 10913 from circa 2017.

I pretty well finished my first model back around 2016, but I didn't quite finish the car.  A few small details like the A/C roof vents, stirrup steps, and adjusting the interior to fit properly with the car's internal weight.

Left side of my SP 10913 from circa 2017.

I've noticed now, in 2026, that I should have also corrected the size of the windows in the dining and lounge sections too, so I'll be working on that later here as well.  However, let's start back at the beginning.

Prototype Cafe-Lounge & Dining Cars

I know it's painted in the wrong color for passenger service, but the SPMW 7021D is my model of a 72-D-2 class Diner, which was a very similar design to the 72-D-3s which we're looking at today, before they went through the Cafe-Lounge conversion in 1937.  This photo nicely shows the original window arrangement of the six evenly spaced windows in the main dining section.  The roof-top swamp cooler I believe was a non-A/C modification which was applied at some point, possibly after MW conversion of the 7021D.

Left side of SPMW 7021D, an ex-72-D-2/3 class "Diner" to show what these cars looked like before the Cafe-Lounge" conversion in 1937.

I should add here that Chicago & Alton (608 & 609) and Oregon Short Line (369) both had 72-D-3s as well, plus UP had some cars similar as well, although the 72-D-2 and -3 as-built only had 5 windows in the dining section when new.

A few months ago I posted my 'Timeline Graphic' meant to give an idea of the number of cars in various services over the years with consolidated notes on each one from the SPHTS Passenger Car books.

Excerpt from my Timeline of the SP's 72-D3 and 77-D-2 Cafe-Lounge conversions from the 1930s to 1960 era.

The five cars of 10911-10915, were rebuilt from the old 72ft non-A/C diners from 72-D-3 class.  The rebuild included changing the 3 sets of windows away from the kitchen by pushing them about 3ft towards the end of the car.  They retained the 2'5" window columns in the dining section's 3 windows, but had 2'0" columns between the lounge section windows, which I won't be replicating on my models because I just noticed that in 2026, not 2012 or whenever we started these kitbashes... oops.

Also of note, the dining car section of the SPHTS Vol.4 shows that SP 10012, 10013, 10015 (72-D-2s) were painted in TTG3, and 10012 suggests this was done in Sept 1948.  All four cars including the 10014 received Waukesha 1 Enginator A/C in 9-11 1937 when they were converted to Cafe-Lounge service.

The rest of the SP's 72-D-3s (except SP 100011), SP 10000-10002 and 10004-10005 were never upgraded with A/C and were all retired in 1948 & 1949, except for 10002 which was leased to the CCC in 1937 and then to R&LHS in 1938, before being stripped in 1938, and finally retired in 1940.

SP 10913, Construction 2014-2015 Era

SP 10913 Right Side before I cut open the far right aisle window

By this time I've already roughed out the body kitbashing enough to actually have the trucks under the car body and the roof roughed out as well.

SP 10913 Right Side, after I cut out the rough opening of the high aisle window.

These cars retained their bulkheads at the end of the frame with the vestibules, thus retained their 72-D classification, not increasing the structural frame length of the floor.  the doors on the SE and NW corners were enclosed, leaving only vestibule doors with steps at the SW and NE corners of the car.  I'm not sure why the door was kept at the lounge-end of the car.

SP 10913 Left Side

The Kitchen windows were cut open all the way to the bottom of the letterboard.  This is to allow blanking styrene plugs to be placed in the lower window opening to replicate the kitchen windows of the time, which interestingly probably was the first appliance of this window style on the SP Diners, which didn't seem to get this style until about 1940.

SP 10913, Completed 2017 Version

Left side of the as-completed kitbashed model.

I pushed forward back in the day, fitting the car with underbody equipment parts and some interior tables and lounge chairs from Palace Car Works.  The Kitchen was a stolen Rivarossi Diner interior kitchen.  The wind-vane smoke jacks came from Kit-Bits from BCWs, which I believe are out of production now sadly.  I believe most of the underbody equipment is PSC plastic parts.

Right side of the as-completed kitbashed model.

I used the MDC step wells and my standard Walthers HW 6-wheel passenger trucks, which should allow future LED lighting in the car.  The car was finished with Star Brand SP Dark Olive Green paint and ThinFilm-160 lettering for post-1946 SP lettering arrangement.  The window shades are aluminum painted paper shades.

SP 10014, 72-D-3 Diner, Post-WWII Era (March 2026 Work)

This whole time I've had a second Cafe-Lounge body, which I've not finished past basic primer.  This one I believe was actually roughed out by my friend John Ruehle.  Once I put the SP 10913 into service, the requirement for a second one was relaxed some as another car was used in La Mesa Club's second West Coast consist, leaving the SP 10913 to work as the Cafe-Lounge on one consist alone.

Left side of SP 10915

So this second body was planned to be Cafe-Lounge SP 10915 to be in the second West Coast consist, but then fell by the wayside as it wasn't really as needed, so it has sat for 10-12 years now.

Right side of SP 10915

This body had more issues with damage to the rivet rows of the MDC body panels, and a couple of the joints were a bit rougher than the SP 10913's body, thus why I put the 10913 into service first.  I did give the body a shot of SP Dark Olive Green, but that really showed that I needed to do more body work before committing to putting decals and more mechanical work into it.

Left side of Dark Olive Green painted body.

However, now that we have have Archer Rivet Decals, and their Pullman Rivet Pattern decal sets, I'm going to start doing more body work to complete this body.

Right side of Dark Olive Green painted body.

The roof also seems to have a bit of a bow in it, which I'll have to work out what to do with as I get the car farther along.  I'm considering reusing some of the Athearn-MDC era magnetic roof retaining pieces to draw down the middle of the roof over the dining section.

Right side exterior, interior of left side.

These elevated views are to show the location of the splice joints in the body.

Left side exterior, interior of right side.

Not that much to more to say about the other side looking into the interior.

Converting from SP 10915 to SP 10014

At this point, I looked again at the SP Lounge Timeline Graphic for the 72-D-3 Cafe-Lounge rebuilt cars.

Excerpt from my Timeline of the SP's 72-D3 and 77-D-2 Cafe-Lounge conversions from the 1930s to 1960 era.

The interesting thing about history is... nothing ever works out the way it was planned to.  The majority of these Cafe-Lounges were pulled back into the shops in May 1942 and the lounge chairs were pulled out and tables were placed back into the 'lounge section', converting them back into 'dining cars' again.  The cars had their numbers and lettering changes on the exterior of the cars. 

The SP 10011 was retired in 9/49 and converted to serve as SP 145 1/5/50 as a air-conditioning Instruction Car, with most of its windows covered over with sheet metal and painted DOG, then TTG in 1955, before being converted again to a conference car in 10/59 and painted in SSS of the era and finally being retired somewhere around 1970.

The SP 10014 seemed to be the longest lived of these ex-Cafe-Lounge turned Diners, the SP 10014's history is a little simpler.  Being retired in 1/51 and transferred to SPMW service in 2/53 as SPMW 646, the car was transformed into the dorms and offices for the crew of the Rail Fissure Detector Car as their "Tender".  The car was still painted in Dark Olive Green until circa 1954, then in TTG until about 1985 when it was repainted to the Solid Gray scheme.  According to the Business Car book by SPH&TS, it was always operated with SPMW 4520 (ex-USAX Kitchen Car), turned supply and maintenance car  which complemented the support of SPO-1001 and SPO 4901 detector cars, which were painted Daylight and have been made available in brass.  As for the revenue version of the model, I've settled on the SP 10014 as the Diner to squeeze most of another year out of the model compared to the SP 10011.

What Makes a Diner or a Lounge?

I should note that, given the SP did the same type of thing to the dining section of the San Joaquin Daylight's Triple-Unit Diners, swapping 2/3s of the dining tables out for lounge seat and small drink stands in low traffic times during 1949, which usually only took a few hours and a few men to swap the tables and chairs around during layovers at Oakland and Los Angeles.  This makes me think that all of these Cafe-Lounge cars could have been temporally swapped back and forth from Cafe-Lounge to full Dining configurations depending on traffic needs and train assignments. 

This reason alone makes them an interesting car to select to model to increase the operational options of how to employ the car.  I am currently looking at having some non-77-D-3/4 options for extra passenger trains, charter groups, etc and MAIN (Troop) train movements for Korean War.  The SP seemed to get rid of their non-A/C 72-D-3s by 1949, too bad as they would have found use with the MAIN trains within a year of their retirements.

Time for some Body Work

So now that this car body has a proposed new life, I've decided to start seriously looking into what it will take to finish this body into Diner SP 10014, instead of the sister car SP 10915, which remained in Cafe-Lounge service.

Left side with Liquid Surface Primer applied over splice joints.

I also used some of the Tamyia Liquid Surface Primer (LSP) as a more precise sand-able filling compound than something like Squadron Putty, which shows here as vertical columns of darker gray.

Right side with Liquid Surface Primer applied over splice joints.

At this point I've decided it won't really be worth trying to use "S-scale" Archer Rivets to replace the original MDC rivets on both sides of the car where I'm going to need to sand the LSP filler.

Right Side of the body after flat-sanding down the splice joints and rivets.

This results in my sanding the whole car side down smooth and eliminating basically all of the original rivets.  

Left Side of the body after flat-sanding down the splice joints and rivets.

The resulting depth of the Dark Olive and underlying primer being exposed, and the LSP on top.  Oddly enough, having the car in this strangely colored arrangement, it actually makes me think of some of the modern condition of surviving passenger cars during various stages of preservation and repainting.  Not sure I would want to keep the model in this condition though, as I have a mission for it.  But it does make one consider what some of these cars looked like during their yearly shopping if heavy repair and repaint work needed to be done.

SP 10913, March 2026 Rebuilding

I'm starting the 2026 rebuild to raise the top of the windows to match the size that the prototype car's windows were replaced with in 1937, which I missed in my first kitbashing of this model 10 years ago.  So it's time to take it in hand again.

Left side of SP 10913, starting rebuild

The first step here is the marking of the work that I need to do.  I took the interior out from the dining and lounge sections so I don't damage them.  Next I popped the windows out, however the wall sections in the non-kitchen end sandwich the clear styrene windows in place, so I can't remove the glazing at that end.  I'm hoping that I can work around damaging the plastic windows too much during the rebuilding.

Right Side SP 10913, starting rebuild

I was able to get the glazing out on both sides of the dining windows and the aisle section.  I'll be covering most of this car's 2026 Rebuild in future parts of this post.  Let's look at the other car that's not as far along.

In Closing

Maybe... just maybe, I should have split this post into two posts... but as these cars are so closely connected I think it's better to just talk about them in context as they each tell a different part of the same story.

I will look into posting a Part 2 of this post soon when the Archer Rivet Decal order arrive for the SP 10014 or when I do more work of significance on the SP 10913's window modification.  I expect that the mechanical (underframe, bolsters, etc) won't be done on the SP 10014 until the body work is sorted out, but I know many of you that read these blog posts are interested in the mechanical work on these scratch built and heavily kitbashed cars for your own projects, so I'll try to take extra 'how-to' pictures when I'm working on that part of the car again.

Jason Hill

Related Articles

SP HW 77-D-2 Diners from MDC Kitbashing (Part 1) - SP 10096 or SP 10910/T&NO 931?

Modeling "Super Index" Page - with links to my other articles.

SP Passenger Car Statistics - (Part 1) Dining Cars (1930s-1950s) - More in-depth car-by-car research on the SP's HW Dining Cars (data-roster info from SPHTS Passenger Cars Vol.4 book), with extra assignment data from various sources.

SP Passenger Car Statistics - (Part 2) Lounge Cars (1930s-1950s) - More in-depth car-by-car research on the SP's HW 'Full' Lounge Cars (data-roster info from SPHTS Passenger Cars Vol.5 book), with extra assignment data from various sources.

Index for Modeling Pullman Pool HW Passenger Cars - Overview of Pullman Pool HW Car Models

Index for Modeling HW SP Passenger Car Classes - Overview of SP HW Car Models

SP HW 77-D-2 Diners from MDC Kitbashing (Part 1)

I know I've mostly been quiet over the last six months here.  What posts I've made are on upcoming Golden Gate Depot Harriman V2.0 cars (Diners, Lounges, etc), but I want to get back to some of the kitbashes of other cars I've worked on over the years and a couple that have come back to the top of the pile to be worked on a bit more.

Aisle side of SP 10112, a 77-D-3, diner after rebuild circa 1940 with new tall windows. - photo from Bob Zenk collection

Many years ago, probably nearly 15-25 years ago now, I started several kitbashes to model various SP food service cars.  So this will be the first of a series of blog posts gathering up the kitbashing I've done so far and starting to continue working on some of these projects.

SP 77-D-2 - Early MDC Conversion (Started Around 2010)

This is actually the second time I tried to make a kitbash of the SP 10096.  My first attempt wasn't very accurate at all, because I used a Rivarossi HW Diner with MDC roof, which resulted in a car about 7ft too long and a number of other issues.  this is the story of my second attempt, this time starting with MDC Harriman car body parts.

Looking at the SPH&TS 1933 Passenger Car Diagram book, and then the SPH&TS Passenger Cars Vol. Dining Cars book a few years later, I decided around 2010-2011 that I could model a 77-D-2 by recombining 60ft MDC Harriman carbody parts from a mixture of MDC "Diner", Coach/Combine, and a couple blank parts from the Diner, Combine, or Baggage/RPO models.

This is an excerpt from my "Timeline" graphic for SP HW Diners.

Most of the SP's 77-D-2s were not rebuilt and upgraded until late compared to the rest of the SP's HW Dining car fleet, waiting until 1940 to be A/C'd and then assigned to TwoToneGray painted service on the Golden State Limited and Lark protection service.

Left Side of Rough Kitbashed Body

The Daylight body panels came from a Harriman Combine.  I believe the other body parts came from Harriman Diner and maybe a couple pieces from a coach.  The Diner has several larger blank wall sections too.
The Kitchen door was hand-carved into the plastic side.  The 77-D-2s were unique from the other 77-D-series arch-roof cars by having the one small window and three standard-sized kitchen/pantry windows.

Right Side of Rough Kitbashed Body

The right side of the car needs four aisle-side windows and then the standard 6-windows for the dining section.  

Expecting to Model SP 10096, 77-D-2 for Lark Protection Service

Right Side

I probably should have been more aggressive sanding and cleaning up the joints of the car at this point.  However, at the time we didn't have 3d printed Archer Rivets resin decals, so I tried to get by with minimal joint work and destruction of the rivets from the MDC pieces.

Left Side

The Kitchen windows of the SP 10096 were partly blanked in the 1940-42 upgrades.  I modified the blind end of the car's small toilet window to be more like the prototype arrangement by raising it up.

Right Side in TTG

And for about 13 years no additional work was done on the car outside of roughing out a TTG paint scheme on the car.

Left Side in TTG

However, I ran into problems getting stripes from Microscale and good lettering decals.  The Thinfilms I got at the time had excessively thick black pinstripes sadly.

March 2026 - Decision Made to Convert to SP 10910/T&NO 931

Enter 2026, time for a change in direction for this model.  With the expected soon arrival of Golden Gate Depot 77-D-1/3/4s, including a TTG model which I can use if I ever put together a Lark consist, I probably won't need this 77-D-2 to be painted in TTG anymore.

Right Side with 7th dining section window with joint filling

The SP had one 77-D-2 car, SP 10094, which was an odd-ball car.  It received Ice-A/C in 8/1936.  The car when it went into the shops came out as one of the SP Cafe-Lounge cars, which normally involved shifting three of the dining section windows away from the kitchen to install some extra drink stations for the new Lounge section without needing to walk through the dining section.  The SP 10910 however emerged from the rebuild with a 7th window set cut into the end of the car, making it a unique car on the SP.

I only have one photo of this car, from the outshopping in 8/1936 in which the car still had transom windows.  It didn't receive high-windows like many of the other SP diners during the 1937-39 era or the 77-D-2s did in their 1940-42 upgrades, but I believe it would have eventually received them after 1940, as almost all of the other SP diners did.  Also the standard kitchen windows went to this horizontal bar-style window around 1940... so I suspect the 10910 must have had these upgrades too.  The notes show that SP 10910 was assigned to the Shasta after receiving A/C circa 1936 along with the SP 10903, a converted Cafe-Observation.

The Cafe-Lounge was then reassigned to T&NO as their 931, and with this transfer it was outshopped back to full dining car service in 4/44 for the war effort.  The interior of the diner was then swapped to a full lounge-car in 8/50 until 1/51, probably for the Christmas rush season.  In 1/51, probably with the Korean War press setting in, the car was returned to dining tables and chairs until it was retired in 1955 and scrapped at Houston in 1956.  So it looks like I get to model an oddball T&NO Diner!

The modeling of this car as a T&NO Diner really isn't a problem as I'm generally modeling the SP's passenger pool based out of Los Angeles during the 1949-1953 era.  This car could have easily been assigned to trains off the Texas and New Orleans such as the Argonaut or the large number of MAIN (Troop) trains heading west to embark for Korea.  The car certainly could have been pulled to run a protection move on the Owl or West Coast out of LA.

Next Steps, as of 25 March 2026.

I marked the upper sash of the stock MDC windows and carved them about 3" higher and cleaned up the opening with a file.

The last window on the left side still has a small section of the high window I added 15 years ago, which I'll have to plug.  The upper edge of the window opening will also need some dimensional styrene, maybe 0.02" square strip or so, to reform the top sash of the window frame.

Left Side with joint filling 

During this upgrade I've also gone back across this car and applied Tamiya Liquid Surface Primer to fill in the minor gaps that remained from the splice joints.  I'm then sanding carefully along the joints to smooth it out.  I have some Archer Rivet decals on the way, which is Type 1 Pullman Rivet Rows, so I'll do an update when I put those on.

I also have been cleaning up the roof of the car as well, adjusting the fit of the roof-splice joint and do a better job filling the roof vent holes.  I'm planning to make some detail parts to detail the roof and underbody of the car.  So that will come in the future.  I still have a few Bethlehem Car Works baggage car step etchings, which I'll probably use on this car to form the steps.

Once the body work is done, I'll repaint the car body into SP Dark Olive Green and then decalled as the T&NO 931.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Modeling "Super Index" Page - with links to my other articles.

SP Passenger Car Statistics - (Part 1) Dining Cars (1930s-1950s) - More in-depth car-by-car research on the SP's HW Dining Cars (data-roster info from SPHTS Passenger Cars Vol.4 book), with extra assignment data from various sources.

SP Passenger Car Statistics - (Part 2) Lounge Cars (1930s-1950s) - More in-depth car-by-car research on the SP's HW 'Full' Lounge Cars (data-roster info from SPHTS Passenger Cars Vol.5 book), with extra assignment data from various sources.

Index for Modeling Pullman Pool HW Passenger Cars - Overview of Pullman Pool HW Car Models

Index for Modeling HW SP Passenger Car Classes - Overview of SP HW Car Models