First stop of the day to pick up cars for Indy…
Ya just gotta know where to look for em. Long live the caboose!
Where I live there is a Canadian National switchyard really close and they use them, as it is ‘wayfreight’ train…one that does alot of backing up, so they use 'em. (Otherwise, trains out here don’t use them). It is nice to see them today. Everyday I can hear them tooting their horn, so I rush out there to watch them switch around, spotting cars. Oh, what a time to be alive!!!
My home town has a bi-law ( as old as the hills mind you ) but all switching movements in the city limits need to have a live caboose so they own a very shabby ex -CN one to keep peace with the city fathers.
Labor agreements that date back to either 1985 or 1986 eliminated the brakeman and the caboose or waycars for you CNW and CB&Q fans. But they are still in limited use by the Class 1 Railroads I know I have seen them on both the BNMSF and CN/IC RRS in the Omaha and Council Bluffs area mostly on transfers into and out of the Union Pacific Yards in Council Bluffs. They are used as a platform for either the forman or his helper on extended reverse moves. In Clinton Iowa they use an old CNW bay window waycar for an industry job that goes out west of town And sometimes they will be used on work train service Hope this helps Larry
I have found that spotting a caboose in a yard or in action really isn’t that rare. Once you look around enough, you’re not surprised to see them pop up anymore. While most of them are used as shoving platforms or for monitoring back up moves, there are still those used in the traditional sense, on locals. And also on unit trains with high value loads. And shortlines…many of them use cabooses still. I’m guessing that having at least one caboose for a variety of these purposes is probably a part of every railroad.
And as stated, there are plenty of cabooses in action on maintenance trains. The Norfolk Southern has cabooses they run to test and verify track conditions. I think NS has about a dozen or so on their roster. I often see them in NS yards.
Norfolk southern gp-40? use one for the delivery to smuckers plant in orrville ohio. They deliver there 2-3 times a week.
The “local” crew I worked with (when I worked for CSX in Nashville) was assigned a caboose but it is officially called a shoving platform. What we did is couple it to the rear of our local and used it to safely ride on the rear of the train when it was being shoved for any good distance because the conductor must ride at the head end when shoving to tell the engineer what is ahead. Also our local was not assigned an EOT and the shoving platform acted as a safety device with a red flag in the rear coupler. They are used rarely but when they are it is by local crews switching on busy main lines, special/high value trains or military transport trains.
I saw a caboose on NS’s Southern Tier line a couple weeks ago. It was at the end of a 3-car train (2 idler flats and a well-hole flatcar with a huge silver thing standing upright in the well). The caboose carried the reporting marks “DODX.” I wish I’d had a camera to take a couple pics of that train. [|(]
The BNSF has at least one here in Denver. There is some sort of a run up from the 23rd street yard going north (by the old D&RGW North Yard), that uses one regularly. Then I’ve often seen one sitting in the industrial area down across the Platte R iver from the Joint Line (around the Denver Water Board area). Don’t know if it is just one caboose working both areas or one caboose in each area.
Well, here’s a great excuse to buy a reallly nice caboose and put it on your modern day layout! there’s a prototype for everything!!
One of several reasons I model the 1950s is that I don’t need excuses to use cabooses. All freight trains have cabooses. Only switching movements within yard limits and helper engines returning home operate without cabooses.
Mark
Oh yeah, silly me, I have pictures. It is two different Caboose here in Denver.
The caboose working the north Denver transfer run looks to be BNSF 1201 (former NP?).
The one in south Denver is 12614.
And the UP has one that lurks in downtown Colorado Springs:
As usual click the photos to enlarge.
Why are all the windows closed? Must be very unpleasant to sit/work inside.
A few years ago a UP Challenger excursion train stopped in Ogden, UT. It included a caboose aft of the locomotive, but ahead of the vintage passenger cars. As I toured the caboose a really nice guy explained that the caboose was on its way home to a museum in California. He went on to tell me that the museum had a few duplicate pieces of rolling stock and a locomotive that they traded to a museum in the mid-west. Unfortunately, those cars lacked the technology that is required to go without a caboose, so they borrowed the caboose from their own museum to bring up the rear of the vintage train. To get the caboose back to the museum, they hitched a ride on the UP Challenger excursion train.
He commented that it was nice to “give the old girl one last trip.” I agree; there’s something sad about seeing anything with wheels standing still, with no hope of ever getting out for a run. Almost like the animals in a zoo; they are safe, but not happy.
It was a wonderful sight to see a museum piece rolling down the track as God intended.
The windows are blocked because if they were glass they wouldn’t last a day or two without a rock being chucked through them (same people that paint the junk on the sides.). I don’t think the sit/work in them. As the first picture shows, one person just stands “look out” on the platform while the train is backing for long distances.
I think the black window covering on the D&RGW are tear offs as opposed to the orange covers on the lower side windows which is sheet metal.
If I saw a 3 car train with a well hole flat car with “DODX” markings carrying big silver shiny things…I’d run like hell. [(-D] Just hope it doesn’t derail!!!
Geez, no wonder they had a caboose!