OK, anybody know what the purpose of the side door is on an IC caboose?
Trainman07011- If i remember correctly the side door was used to help ease the loading of supplies ( coal, food, ect.) . Also to help with maintenince . Otto
Yup, I’ve seen them in action back in the '50s and early '60s in southern Illinois. The side door allowed quick movement in/out of small items the RR carried to the small town stations it served. While I think it could have moved some important express items in the caboose, I suspect it mostly may have been station supplies, etc.
To my knowledge, the IC is the only major RR with them, which does seem a bit odd.
There are a number of kits and “almost” RTR examples of these out there.
Think of that side door as a big, easily accessible window. There was a lengthwise bench seat inside the car under the side doors, and trainmen rode there to observe their trains. They could also grab “hooped up” orders and clearances through the side doors. In the warmer climes of Louisiana and Mississippi, I don’t recall ever seeing IC train crews riding in the cupolas of their cabooses.
So long,
Andy
As Andy wrote, the side door was as much a window as a door.
Given the IC’s many route miles in the south, the ability to open those doors for ventilation and “the view” was likely a major plus - along with the RR’s reason for their placement.
as a side note the side doors were outlawed in the state of iowa. ICRR cabs used on their iowa division did not have them,
grizlump
Griz: I don’t know about Iowa, or what year such a law may have been put into place. The statement about side-door cabooses not being used on the Iowa Division, however, is not true. They were quite common through Freeport, IL on the Iowa Division where my father was an IC conductor. I have a June 1969 photo of the caboose track at Wallace and over half the cabooses in view were side door. Such side-door cabooses were also used on the branch north from Freeport to Madison, WI.
Bill
trains between freeport and hawthorne (chicao) and freeport and madison did not run through the state of iowa. perhaps the law was repealed at a later date. i should have been specific about the side doors being outlawed in the state of iowa and used that term instead of iowa division.
grizlump
Now I’m getting curious. I located the sections of Iowa code (327F.19 and 327F.20) that sets requirements for a caboose, including end platforms, two 4-wheel trucks, & etc. I don’t see wording in there about side doors, so that must be an earlier wording of the section. I have not been able to find the dates of application of a “no side door” law.
In HO scale, LaserKit offers Kit #862, an Illinois Central “Iowa Division” caboose without the side door. They also offer Kit #852, which is the Illinois Central side door caboose. It appears that these are the same kits offered under American Model Builders. So the HO modeler can have both without too much trouble.
I located an entry from 2008 in the Yahoo Illinois Central group by “emerilcat” that discusses this topic. It seems plausible, but does not include any dates for the institution or repeal of the law, nor any historical references:
"That was a law that had it’s genesis at and before the turn of the 20th
century. Some railroads made cabooses out of old boxcars. These were
bare-bones conversions, to the extent that they had no end platforms for getting on and
off. The old side boxcar doors became the only entrance and exit to the
caboose, with a few steps added beneath the doors.
This may have been all right for getting on and off if the car was sitting
still, but trying to board or alight when the car was moving was very
dangerous. If you missed the steps or lost your grip on the grab irons, you
could easily end up under the caboose, where the rear wheelset would either kill you
outright or amputate various limbs (picture trying to get aboard in rain and
snow/ice). Either way, your day was ruined.
Employees and their unions worked hard to get rid of these side-door
cabooses, for obvious reasons. However, some states used too broad a brush.
The IC cabooses
I have a side door IC Roundhouse kit on my bench right now. The division of the B&M in my downstairs guest room is going to run one, repainted B&M style, namely box car red except for the ends which get painted bright caboose red. The B&M was a very thrifty road. But the side door looks like just the thing for crews on back woods branch lines to handle news papers, packages, and crew provisions thru. The real B&M ran some cabooses converted from wood milk cars that didn’t have side doors but looked as if they ought to have them.
I guess the cupolas were not such an issue after freight cars started exceeding “plate C” dimensions, you could not see over the top of high cube box cars or auto racks.
grizlump
Most likely the law was just removed from state statutes as being outdated. There are firms that are hired by states and counties to go through their laws and find antiquated codes and statutes that can be deleted.
Some years back I came across our state’s (Minnesota) 1911 Railroad Act, which required among other things that by May 1913 cabooses had to be at least 24’ long and have at least two four-wheel trucks. I know it was still on the books a couple of years ago, but I just searched the Revisor of Statutes website and the law is apparently no longer there.
An interesting consequence was the creation of the wood caboose recently modelled by Walthers in HO, based on the DM&IR caboose. The early versions of the caboose (years before the DM&N and D&IR merger) were two “bobber” cabooses put together. If you look at pics of the old bobbers and the DMIR wood caboose, it’s pretty easy to see the resemblence.