Does anyone know of a good source for a Southern Railway, '30’s-'40’s steam era, caboose – HO scale?
Civil War Nut
St. Louis
they might have some at www.discounttrainsonline.com
The Southern was a road that was quick to embrace modernization. That coupled with the fact that most Southern modelers forget that the road ever HAD steam (except for the green Pacifics) means that there’s VERY little information out there regarding the road’s pre-bay window caboose fleet. The only online photo of a “typical” wood caboose for the Southern was at this site:
http://www.srmduluth.org/Exhibits/caboose.htm
The caboose looks similar to AMB’s kit #859, which is actually an ACL caboose:
http://www.laserkit.com/laserkit.htm
Southern Railfan.net (an excellent Southern resource) only shows a single Southern wood caboose - a bobber. All the other cabs shown are post-steam, in general.
http://southern.railfan.net/images/archive/southern/caboose/caboose.html
Of course, because the Southern was fast to modernize, they had some of the first steel bay window cabooses in the nation, first built in 1948. Wright Track has an excellent resin model of these cabs, which are BARELY steam era:
http://www.wrighttrak.com/
Hope this helps!
Forgot to mention…
Westerfield has a resin kit for two Southern war-emergency cabooses, converted from older 36-foot boacars:
http://www.westerfield.biz/
Kits 4161 and 4162 (bottom of the page containing the SU boxcars)
Here is a picture of one for you. There are several kits that look like this one:
http://southern.railfan.net/images/archive/southern/caboose/soux66warmsprings571.html
One problem: compare that photo with the other photos on the same page: it’s a Central of Georgia caboose, which means that for the Southern, it’s post-steam (the SOU bought the Cof G in the 1960s)