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 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