I currently use two classes of cabooses, the P&R NMa and NMb. The NMb has a cupola.
A couple of brass models I painted a number of years ago.
Jim
Nice cabooses Jim, but I really like the way you did your background / backdrop. That’s very nicely done! Do you have a photo page where you have more images?
John
Does your railroad use cabooses?
The C&HV uses 4 men crews and therefore owns 6 cabooses.
If so, what do they look like? Are they just one type, or does your railroad have an assortment, or perhaps different types for different jobs?
C&HV caboose fleet consist of 4 ex Chessie(C&O) and 2 ex CR(former PC/NYC cabooses)…
Did your railroad ever have a “Caboose shortage”?? If so, why? And what did they do about it?
No,but,we can lease cabooses from Chessie if the need araises.
Does your railroad have any “unusual” cabooses?
No…
Do you have any “Caboose Tales” to tell? (If so, by all means, do tell.
Nothing to tell as far as caboose tales.
This is the leftover movie prop for Repo Chick. (Yes a real movie) In the movie, this Caboose is some sort of control center filled with military people. The antenna actually done by computer special effects pops out of the of the copula of the caboose and is chased by several missiles that miss their target and explode. The movie is about a bunch of HO Scale people out of control on a model railroad layout, but they don’t know they are HO scale. I don’t think this movie will win any Academy Awards, not by a long shot.
Okay, now we’re gonna need a YouTube link… 
John
John: Yes, my railroad does use cabooses as the period I model stops at 1970. I model the East St. Louis area so I use cabooses from TRRA, CB&Q, PRR, NYC, B&O, SRR, L&M, Litchfield & Madison, IT, A&S, MP, SSW, SP, IC, GM&O, NKP, WAB, E. St. L JCT, C&EI and C&NW. As there are so many railroads all types of cabooses are seen, such as cupola types, wide vision types, bay widow types and transfer types. I have had to scratch build and kitbash some cabooses as they are not available commercially or they are available but not prototype for that road. Besides the above roads I have over 100 cabooses on display that are not from the E. St. Louis Rail Group. I am known by our round robin group as “The Caboose Guy”. As for unusual cabooses, one I scratch built is for Monongahela Connecting RR, a steel mill railroad in Pennsylvania. It was a home made one by the Moncon and is a strange looking beast, being tall and short with a gable roof! I sure do miss the caboose on the end of a train, thus I have only a passing interest in modern railroads from a modeling stand point.
John,
Thank you for the compliment. Actually the backgrounds are presenting me with something of a dilemma. The backdrops are available at just about any hobby shop and they are designed to connect together to form a longer scene. The problem is I bought them a different times and I suppose when the company manufactured them there are differences in the color of the sky. So I need to figure out a way to connect the backdrops together and blend the different sky colors into something a little more uniform. I’m leaning towards airbrushing a “white haze” to try to pull it all together. But, any ideas anyone has would gladly be considered.
Jim
John … You certainly started an interesting thread. What a wide variety of cabooses! There are some really good models here.
My “cabeese” are mostly CB&Q. I have connecting road cabooses as well.
In this photo. Closest track. branchline caboose (modified Roundhouse kit); 4 window wood mineral red (Walthers) Second track: 4 window wood chinese red (Walthers); 3 window wood (modified Roundhouse); Steel silver (modified Bachman). Third track: Wide vision (Atlas), 3 window silver (roaundhouse), GN wood caboose (wooden model); NP steel caboose (modfied Sanat Fe caboose not NP prototye)… Several of these have duplicates on my layout.
Here is the branchline caboose in action.
Why not cut the sky out of the backdrops (with a sharp hobby knife) and then paint the wall / surface your sky color and then mount the backdrops against that. Then the sky will be a nice uniform color.
John
Here’s my scratch build Track Cleaning Transfer Caboose.
Wolfgang
[image removed]
My RI caboose.
Another shot:
Yeah I know, RI never had this caboose but I do. Rest of my cabeese ( six ) sit on the side most of the time.
Not a one. However, three out of four of my railroads use brake vans.
The full brake vans look like 4-wheel bobbers, with platforms on both ends but no coupolas. All black, except one assigned to the (runs occasionally) train of brand new high speed cars, which is pastel green.
There are also a wide variety of somethingorother-brakes. That is, there’s a brakeman’s compartment on one end (usually) of an otherwise standard goods carrier. This list applies to the JNR:
- Box-brakes, 4-wheel, with and without end platforms.
- Hopper-brake, 4 wheel, no end platform.
- Reefer-brake, 8 wheel high speed car.
- Container-brake, with the brake cabin replacing one of the standard five JNR domestic containers. Very high speed car with humongous roller bearings.
- Drop side gondola brake. 4 wheel car with the brakeman’s booth in the center and open-top cargo space on both ends.
- Pig-brake, 4 wheel double-deck stock car (aka, cruel and unusual punishment.)
Old ones and slow ones are black, some newer ones are fanciful. The container-brake is baby blue!
The Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo needed brake vans for its unit coal trains. The results are un-sanctified unions between one end of an Athearn 50 ton BB hopper and one end of an Athearn bay window caboose, painted black and numbered with SeKiFu single digits. (Of course, the coal units also include articulated hopper cars…)
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I have a few cabooses, but have not taken any pictures of most of them; here is what I have so far:
In the early 60s, MEC had a caboose shortage and built a number from old 40’ box cars. MEC 646 was one I found in a photo. It is a kitbash of an Athearn 40’ boxcar and a wide vision caboose.
MEC had 3 versions of these cabooses. Narrow coupla like the 646, wide vision coupla and a couple for their Portland Terminal RR subsidary that had no coupla.
MEC 556 is an older caboose made from an MDC truss rod caboose kit. The paint scheme was used prior to 1955. Boxcar red sides and red ends. It was replaced by the yellow and green used on the 646.
Here’s my offering, a re-worked Athearn bay window caboose:
Because the end platforms needed to be permanently attached due to the ladders, I sectioned the floor and secured both the ends and the centre section with screws, some of which are just visible at the corners of the underbody:
Here’s a look at the finished end. The screen door was done with silk screening material, sandwiched between two doors of .010" sheet styrene.
My next caboose project will be 9 or 10 scratchbuilt wood-sided ones, built to three different designs on the frame/floor of the Athearn Santa Fe style cupola caboose ('cause I’m too lazy to build 40 sets of steps [swg] ).
Wayne
If you see one, grab one of the old Revell Track cleaining cars. The cleaning head out to be metallic hard by now, so remove them, but thy don’t make a bad stand-in for a reider car. Their wooden modeled, but it’s easier than cutting into the side of a Troop Carrier from Walthers…
No no, those are Cabeece. Or if you prefer, cabooses.
That’s a cabin car, those are c
The Milwaukee ran bay-window cabeese. Here are a few on my caboose track near the roundhouse. There’s a stranger who stopped for the night, too.
LMAO, Flash. That’s a good one. DJ.