In the days of the caboose, what were the regulations regarding the position of the caboose? When running a local freight, if the crew picked up a car could they couple it to the rear of the train behind the caboose; or was it a rule that the caboose be the final car on a train?
In the movie Emperor of the North, I believe, they show the local freight with a flat car behind the caboose. However, I wouldn’t trust that to be accurate any farther than I could throw Lee Marvin.
Well I defer to the active and retired railroaders on this forum but based on long observation, certainly as a rule the caboose was supposed to be at the end of the train. But depending on facing point switches and other conditions sometimes a local might have some cars behind the caboose, sometimes the caboose would be between the locomotive and the cars, and sometimes the caboose would be on the opposite side of the locomotive from the cars. And sometimes the train would run caboose first. And some trains with very special loads would have more than one caboose on either side of the load. So Ernest Borgnine might have been following normal procedures, at least in this one aspect of things.
On short lines, logging railroads, etc all sorts of informality ruled of course.
Also if a car had defective brakes or couplers sometimes it would be placed behind the caboose. I can recall seeing defective coal gons from the Oak Creek power plant being towed behind the caboose of the CNW local back to the Cudahy car shops – and sometimes there was no longer a coupler on the far end of the car.
As a rule tank cars were not supposed to be coupled to the locomotive or the caboose but sometimes there was no way to avoid that. Also certain open loads were not supposed to be coupled to tank cars (a shifted load could puncture the car). Quite possibly similar rules applied to open loads next to cabooses.
Cabooses, because they carried the markers, had to be the last car in the train. The cabooses also had the air gauges and valves that the conductor used to monitor the brake system, and in pre-radio days, communicate with the engineer.
The only time the caboose wasn’t rear out, was in the case of a moving a cripple car with only one drawhead. Or, if regulations permitted, when helpers shoved the train. Although, many roads required the helpers to be cut in ahead of the caboose.
If it expidited a move I would put the car behind me Place a flag in the coupler and down the road I would go! I have seen locals do this with the caboose behind the engine and a string of cars behind it and a flag in the coupler. That would satisfy the marker rule.
Old rulebooks state to haul a cripple along you need to connect the air and use a log chain to tie around the coupler of the caboose and the cripple car. We have same rules today however your not tying on a caboose anymore ( unless your lucky enough to ahve one assigned to your job)
There is also a safety factor for caboose placement.
There should be a difference between a wood-construction caboose and a metal-construction caboose. Metal cabooses should be strong enough to have helper engines push them whereas these same helper engines could easily crush wooden cabooses.
The C&O would place the caboose behind the pusher or helper engines to keep from bending the frame But that would still make it at the end of the train
I remember seeing a short Conrail train with a caboose right behind the engine and 3 or 4 cars behind that. I assumed they had made a pickup and were heading back to the yard.
Thanks for the replies, seems to be a bit of a debate about it. I suppose the rules varied from railroad to railroad. Is there any way of finding out if the Union Pacific or Oregon Shortline did this in the '50s? An old photo showing it would be nice, but I’ve never seen one.
It would be unique detail to rig a scale flag to fit on HO scale couplers. I’ll bet it could be attached with Woodland Scenics accent glue so it could be moved from car to car.
Just sticking a little scale flag in the coupler shouldn’t be hard–try using a tiny bit of that tacky stuff that is used to temporarily affix pictures to walls.
Interurban freight practice often had the caboose placed right behind the freight motor. When boxcab locomotives were used, the brakemen and conductor often rode in the boxcab instead of a separate caboose (in fact, some electric railroads used demotored boxcabs as cabeese!)
I don’t know if it’s so much different railroads having different rules (federal law is federal law everywhere) but more a question of the situation and circumstances. In say the sixties when I was a kid, I would expect a Burlington Route overnight manifest freight with 75 cars going 60 miles an hour on the mainline from Minneapolis to Chicago would be sure to have a properly markered caboose on the tail end. However on the line in front of my house in Richfield MN (the “highline” a dead-end branchline of the tiny Minneapolis Northfield and Southern) a mid-day local with a one FM H-10-44 and six cars going 5-10 MPH didn’t seem to have a problem sticking a car or two behind the caboose if it made switching a little easier. There was a run-around track at the end of the line, if they had a couple of cars for a facing-point spur on the way up, they might wait until they got to the end of the line and put those cars behind the caboose on the way back to make dropping the cars off a little easier on the way back to civilization.
About 1 hour ago I watched a CSX local on a spur that serves a zinc smelter, a chemical plant, and a wallboard factory. There were two locos (a GP40-2 and another unmarked low short hood unit) with a bay window caboose in the #3 position, then some covered hoppers, some tanks, some centerbeam flats, and some bulkhead flats, about 20 - 25 cars altogether.
Since RR have been able to operate without a caboose on the tail of a train trains can obviously operate without any caboose at all. Tyhis then relates to several things.
no caboose anywhere
a caboose may be included to carry crew for one reason or another.
a caboose may simply be being transfered from one location to another (the equivalent of dead heading)
some non-federal authorities still require cabooses for all or some moves subject to their own specification(s).
Some RR may specify that certain trains or traffic will run with a caboose. This particularly applies to out of gauge loads (where more than one caboose may be required in the train). It sometimes also applies on branchline working where a lot of switching occurs at the back end of a train and siting crew there makes working more efficient. Similarly a caboose may be required for transfer moves.
Some customers, mainly of out-of-guge loads, want to be able to have their own staff ride with the load… this may be most appropriately done by including a caboose.
All these factors keep cabooses in use and mean that they may appear at different places in a modern train.
If we go back before caboose-less trains - (what was the date of the change please)? - the universal rule was that all trains without exception were required to have a caboose as the last car… except light engine moves and passenger trains which would, however, have a baggage and/or combine in the consist somewhere. Then there were exceptions… but these would have been very specific… usually related to the difficulties of making attachments or cut-outs at spurs en-route… BUT the normal rule would have to be re-established at the first working opportunity.
One thing to consider is what a caboose is doing.
It is an office and crew space.
It carries the trains tail end markers (which can be ob
People mention trailing cars behind the caboose because of defects.
If a defect were sufficiently bad that the car had to be watched in case it derailed or fell apart there is no way any tail end crew would accept it to run ahead of them. Would you drive right behind a truck that was falling apart? They also wouldn’t drag it because if it did dreail or come apart it would block the line behind them and, possibly, any line in the opposite direction… leaving debris for other trains to run into.
Maybe it’s worth elaborating a bit on what happens with a breakdown or derailment.
With the right kind of FRED the system will alert the engineer to the fact that he has some types of problem. This would be of the nature that he is losing air from the brake system. This might not be apparent at first if his train is in a situation where it cn coast - which is the simple process of rolling with momentum between either hauling or holding back (braking).
With or without a FRED any break in a functioning automatic brake pipe will drop the brakes on throughout the train, With a long train this might take a few moments to kick in right along the train. “Going into emergency” is a full application… the expression “no holds barred” comes to mind… I’ve been on a 4car EMU with a full application of pure Westinghouse (no EP) and I nutted the windscreen hard while the unit literally hopped up and down for the very short distance it took to stop… and we were only going about 10mph… The greater weight and length of a frieght train would iron this out a bit… you still don’t want it to happen. The most common cause is probably drawgear failure between cars.
(When someone pulls a communication cord/emergency alram on a passenger train the ones that are lin
Another issue is weight cars. The ones that are used for checking track scales. They are always the last car in the train, with the caboose following. Railroaders hate them, because they have no brakes. Brake systems and their components will wear, or collect water from the compressed air, and alter the mass of the car. So they don’t have those systems. The caboose would follow, because it’s not a good idea to put it between the weight car and the train.
What you do not want most is to leave the weight car behind!
If you look you will see that these cars are still piped… if they don’t have their own air brakes they will have plain pipe through the car and a hand brake for tieing them down/parking them. I wouldn’t have thought that either deposited water or brake wear would affect their weight by that much (brake wear might be significant) water could always be dumped from the trap.
Here we wuld run them two cars forward of the brakevan (caboose) if we had them… same 3 cars with brakes working as above…
I would expect the weight cars to be severely speed restricted because of their short length… another thing to hate them for.
Does any RR still use weight cars or do they have contractors come in with a truck with an hydraulic boom and place known weights on the scales?
Now I’ve heard everything! For your information, the caboose IS NOT the end of the train! The end of the train is THE MARKER! PERIOD
The caboose could be placed anywhere within the train, even ahead of the engine, but, the rear of the train will be the Car with the Marker hanging on the rear!
if that’s the case - could it be said that a “train” is not a “train” until the loco is attached (giving it some form of identifying number) and the caboose marker lanterns (or some other form of an EOT device) are lit and hung?