I was so excited. There is a railroad over pass I drive under every day. While driving home on the Garden State Parkway I saw a caboose at the end of a freight train. It was a solid “Conrail” shade of blue covered in graffiti. I haven’t seen a real caboose on a regular freight train in decades! It was neat. As kids my brother and I were always mesmerized by the trains that ran behind my grandparents place. To see a real caboose made my day. Probably off to the bone yard but neat to see anyway.
You sure it wasn’t a “Shoving Platform” on a local? Still cool either way though.
Looked pretty much like this one:
On the CSX line here in Richmond I see fairly often two cabooses on the local switch jobs. One’s an old SCL caboose, one’s the CSX “Operation Lifesaver” caboose. Or I should say they USED to be what I described, the conditions of both of them now are disgusting and disgraceful. If the “taggers” put paint on these things they’d be doing the railroad a favor.
I miss seeing the caboose on freight trains. If railroads could house reflief crews on long-distance freight trains in cabooses, they could save lots of moeny in hotel bills and taxicab fares. They ought to take up an idea from the trucking industry and in stall the same kind of APU’s that are in big trucks to run the heating/air comditioning as well as provide power for satellite communication devices. They could run on natural gas, oil, diesel, solar power, or even have their own wind generating device atop the caboose. When its time for a crew change, they only need to pull over to a passing siding and both crews can make a complete safety inspection as they walk the length of the train to relieve each other enroute. Nobody will go over the nadatory hours of service limits imposed by the DOT either.
Housing off-duty crews in cabooses as described above would require renegotiation of labor contracts. The concept probably wouldn’t save any money since the cash saved in not having to pay lodging and crew transportaion would be spent in maintaining the cabooses as rolling hotels.
Besides reducing the crew count - two other reasons for the elimination of cabooses on freight trains - the injury frequency to occupants from unexpected slack action and the costs of maintaining the caboose both to the maintenance level of a pieced of rolling stock as well as maintaining the ‘creature comforts’ that were required of a occupied piece of rolling stock. Those costs were not inconsequential.
The UP has outfitted some cabooses with old passenger coach seats to use to ferry deadhead crews during severe winter weather. They call them “blizzard buses.” When in use the sandwich the caboose between two engines. The cabooses are equipped with MU cable and hoses to allow the two engines to be MUed. To change direction (other than short reverse moves) you just change ends and are ready to go.
Some cabooses have also been modified with extra seats, locker/cabinets and desk space for use by MOW gangs on work trains. These are called “gang cars.” Many in my area are from the last ex-MP order of bay window cabooses with extended “porch” areas. Many gangs have added a non-railroad item, a propane grill. Once I caught a rail train working at an outlying area for a week off the condr’s extra board. The engr and myself were invited to join in at lunch time with the gang. Everyone threw in a couple dollars and some one on the gang (I think on this train it was an assistant foreman) did the shopping and cooking. We ate pretty good that week.
Jeff
We used a genuine caboose on the Corona Local in California. The caboose had been restored by a couple Santa Fe employees. Everything worked but the bathrooms.### As far as I know it is still in use today. Check out the BNSF yard in Corona.
Surely you are joking. you are not going to get any real rest on a caboose being slammed around the tail end of a freight train. Esp. with hoggers running trains the “company way”. And I’ve had to use cabooses on the railroad. There is no way they would be anything less than completely nasty if they were used as mobile bunk rooms. Many on the railroad do not know of a thing called cleanliness.
Hotel rooms are disgusting enough, but at least they might change the sheets once a month…