![Preserved Caboose Car](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Preserved_Caboose_Car.jpg)
A caboose is a crewed North American
railroad car coupled at the end of a
freight train
Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons (International Union of Railways) haul ...
. Cabooses provide shelter for crew at the end of a train, who were formerly required in
switching and
shunting, keeping a lookout for
load shifting
Load shifting is a dangerous phenomenon in water, air, and ground transportation where cargo shifts in a cargo vehicle. This causes the vehicle to tilt, which causes even more movement of the cargo, and further tilting, thereby creating a positiv ...
, damage to equipment and cargo, and
overheating axles.
Originally
flatcar
A flatcar (US) (also flat car, or flatbed) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on a pair of trucks (US) or bogies (UK), one at each end containing four or six wheels. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry ...
s fitted with
cabins or modified
box car
A boxcar is the North American (AAR) term for a railroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carry freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is considered one of the most versatile since it can carry most loa ...
s, they later became purpose-built with projections above or to the sides of the car to allow crew to observe the train from shelter. The caboose also served as the
conductor's office, and on long routes included sleeping accommodations and cooking facilities.
A similar railroad car, the
brake van
Brake van and guard's van are terms used mainly in the UK, Ireland, Australia and India for a railway vehicle equipped with a hand brake which can be applied by the guard. The equivalent North American term is caboose, but a British brake van ...
, was used on British and Commonwealth railways (the role has since been replaced by the
crew car in Australia). On trains not fitted with
continuous brakes
A railway brake is a type of brake used on the cars of railway trains to enable deceleration, control acceleration (downhill) or to keep them immobile when parked. While the basic principle is similar to that on road vehicle usage, operational f ...
, brake vans provided a supplementary braking system, and they helped keep
chain couplings taut.
Cabooses were used on every freight train in the United States and Canada until the 1980s,
[ when safety laws requiring the presence of cabooses and full crews were relaxed. A major purpose of the caboose was for observing problems at the rear of the train before they caused trouble. Lineside ]defect detectors
A defect detector is a device used on railroads to detect axle and signal problems in passing trains. The detectors are normally integrated into the tracks and often include sensors to detect several different kinds of problems that could occur. ...
and end-of-train device
The end of train device (ETD), sometimes referred to as an EOT, flashing rear-end device (FRED) or sense and braking unit (SBU) is an electronic device mounted on the end of freight trains in lieu of a caboose. They are divided into three catego ...
s eliminated a lot of this need. Older freight cars had plain bearings
A plain bearing, or more commonly sliding contact bearing and slide bearing (in railroading sometimes called a solid bearing, journal bearing, or friction bearing), is the simplest type of bearing, comprising just a bearing surface and no rolli ...
with hotboxes for crews to spot overheating – as freight cars replaced these with roller bearing
In mechanical engineering, a rolling-element bearing, also known as a rolling bearing, is a bearing which carries a load by placing rolling elements (such as balls or rollers) between two concentric, grooved rings called races. The relative m ...
s, there was also less need for cabooses to monitor them. Nowadays, they are generally only used on rail maintenance or hazardous materials trains, as a platform for crew on industrial spur line
A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line.
Industrial spur
An industr ...
s when it is required to make long reverse movements, or on heritage and tourist railroads.
Etymology
Railroad historian David L. Joslyn (a retired Southern Pacific Railroad draftsman) has traced the possible root of "caboose" to the obsolete Low German word ''Kabhuse'', a small cabin erected on a sailing ship's main deck. This was absorbed into Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects whose ancestor was Old Dutch. It was spoken and written between 1150 and 1500. Until the advent of Modern Dutch after 1500 or c. 1550, there was no overarc ...
and entered the Dutch language
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-Europea ...
''circa'' 1747 as ''kabhuis'', the compartment on a ship's main deck in which meals were prepared. In modern Dutch, ''kombuis'' is equivalent to ''galley''.
Eighteenth century French naval records also make reference to a ''cambose'' or ''camboose,'' which described both the food preparation cabin on a ship's main deck and its stove
A stove or range is a device that burns fuel or uses electricity to generate heat inside or on top of the apparatus, to be used for general warming or cooking. It has evolved highly over time, with cast-iron and induction versions being develope ...
. Camboose may have entered English through American sailors who had come into contact with their French allies during the American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
. It was already in use in U.S. naval terminology by the 1797 construction of the USS ''Constitution'', whose wood-burning food preparation stove is known as the ''camboose.'' In modern French, ''cambuse'' can refer both to a ship's storeroom and to the North-American railcar.
Camboose as a cook shack was in use in English at least by 1805, when it was used in a New York ''Chronicle'' article cited in the ''New English Dictionary'' describing a New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...
shipwreck, which reported that " urvivorWilliam Duncan drifted aboard the canboose ." As the first railroad cabooses were wooden shanties erected on flat cars as early as the 1830s, they would have resembled the cook shack on a ship's deck.
The earliest known printed record of "caboose" used to describe the railcar appeared in 1859 in court records in conjunction with a lawsuit filed against the New York and Harlem Railway.
The most common pluralization of caboose is "cabooses".
History
Use of cabooses began in the 1830s, when railroads housed trainmen in shanties built onto boxcars or flatcars. The caboose provided the train crew with a shelter at the rear of the train. The crew could exit the train for switching or to protect the rear of the train when stopped. They also inspected the train for problems such as shifting loads, broken or dragging equipment, and hot box
A hot box is the term used when an axle bearing overheats on a piece of railway rolling stock. The term is derived from the journal-bearing trucks used before the mid-20th century. The axle bearings were housed in a box that used oil-soaked ...
es (overheated axle bearings, a serious fire and derailment threat). The conductor kept records and handled business from a table or desk in the caboose. For longer trips, the caboose provided minimal living quarters, and was frequently personalized and decorated with pictures and posters.
Early cabooses were nothing more than flat cars with small cabins erected on them, or modified box cars. The standard form of the American caboose had a platform at either end with curved grab rails to facilitate train crew members' ascent onto a moving train. A caboose was fitted with red lights called markers to enable the rear of the train to be seen at night. This has led to the phrase "bringing up the markers" to describe the last car on a train. These lights were officially what made a train a "train", and were originally lit with oil lamps
An oil lamp is a lamp used to produce light continuously for a period of time using an oil-based fuel source. The use of oil lamps began thousands of years ago and continues to this day, although their use is less common in modern times. Th ...
. With the advent of electricity, later caboose versions incorporated an electrical generator
In electricity generation, a generator is a device that converts motive power (mechanical energy) or fuel-based power ( chemical energy) into electric power for use in an external circuit. Sources of mechanical energy include steam turbines, g ...
driven by belts coupled to one of the axles, which charged a lead-acid storage battery when the train was in motion. The addition of the cupola, a lookout post atop the car, was introduced in 1863.
Coal or wood was originally used to fire a cast-iron stove for heat and cooking, later giving way to a kerosene heater. Now rare, the old stoves can be identified by several essential features. They were without legs, bolted directly to the floor, and featured a lip on the top surface to keep pans and coffee pots from sliding off. They also had a double-latching door, to prevent accidental discharge of hot coals caused by the rocking motion of the caboose.
Cabooses are non-revenue equipment and were often improvised or retained well beyond the normal lifetime of a freight car. Tradition on many lines held that the caboose should be painted a bright red, though on many lines it eventually became the practice to paint them in the same corporate colors as locomotives. The Kansas City Southern Railway
The Kansas City Southern Railway Company is an American Class I railroad. Founded in 1887, it operates in 10 midwestern and southeastern U.S. states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and ...
was unique in that it bought cabooses with a stainless steel car body, and so was not obliged to paint them.
Decline
Until the 1980s,[ laws in the United States and Canada required all freight trains to have a caboose and a full crew, for safety. Technology eventually advanced to a point where the railroads, in an effort to save money by reducing crew members, stated that cabooses were unnecessary.
New diesel locomotives had large cabs that could house entire crews. Distant dispatchers controlled switches, eliminating the need to manually throw switches after trains had passed. Improved signaling eliminated the need to protect the rear of a stopped train.] Bearings were improved and lineside detectors were used to detect hot boxes, which themselves were becoming rarer with more and more freight cars gaining roller bearings. Better-designed cars avoided problems with the loads helped as well. The railroads also claimed a caboose was a dangerous place, as slack run-ins could hurl the crew from their places and even dislodge weighty equipment.
Railroads proposed the end-of-train device
The end of train device (ETD), sometimes referred to as an EOT, flashing rear-end device (FRED) or sense and braking unit (SBU) is an electronic device mounted on the end of freight trains in lieu of a caboose. They are divided into three catego ...
(EOT or ETD), commonly called a FRED (flashing rear-end device), as an alternative.[ An ETD could be attached to the rear of the train to detect the train's air brake pressure and report any problems to the locomotive by ]telemetry
Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', "remote", an ...
.[ The ETD also detects movement of the train upon start-up and radios this information to the engineers so they know all of the slack is out of the couplings and additional power could be applied. The machines also have blinking red lights to warn following trains that a train is ahead. With the introduction of the ETD, the conductor moved up to the front of the train with the engineer.
A 1982 Presidential Emergency Board convened under the Railway Labor Act directed United States railroads to begin eliminating caboose cars where possible to do so. A legal exception was the state of Virginia, which had a 1911 law mandating cabooses on the ends of trains, until the law's final repeal in 1988. With this exception aside, year by year, cabooses started to fade away. Very few cabooses remain in operation today, though they are still used for some local trains where it is convenient to have a brakeman at the end of the train to operate switches, on long reverse movements, and are also used on trains carrying hazardous materials.
CSX Transportation is one of the few Class 1 railroads that still maintains a fleet of modified cabooses for regular use. Employed as "shoving platforms" at the rear of local freight trains which must perform long reverse moves or heavy switching, these are generally rebuilt bay-window cabooses with their cabin doors welded shut (leaving their crews to work from the rear platform). ]BNSF
BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...
also maintains a fleet of former wide-vision cabooses for a similar purpose, and in 2013 began repainting some of them in heritage paint schemes of BNSF's predecessor railroads.
Types
The form of cabooses varied over the years, with changes made both to reflect differences in service and improvements in design. The most commonly seen types are:
Cupola or "standard"
The most common caboose form in American railroad practice has a small windowed projection on the roof, called the cupola
In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome.
The word derives, via Italian, fro ...
. The crew sat in elevated seats to inspect the train from this perch.
The invention of the cupola caboose is generally attributed to T. B. Watson, a freight conductor on the Chicago and North Western Railway
The Chicago and North Western was a Class I railroad in the Midwestern United States. It was also known as the "North Western". The railroad operated more than of track at the turn of the 20th century, and over of track in seven states befor ...
. In 1898, he wrote:
The position of the cupola varied. In most eastern railroad cabooses, the cupola was in the center of the car, but most western railroads preferred to put it toward the end of the car. Some conductors preferred to have the cupola toward the front, others liked it toward the rear of the train, and some just did not care. ATSF conductors could refuse to be assigned to a train if they did not have their cabooses turned to face the way they preferred. However, this would be a rare union agreement clause that could be used, but was not a regular issue.
The classic idea of the "little red caboose" at the end of every train came about when cabooses were painted a reddish brown; however, some railroads (UP, and NKP, for example) painted their cabooses yellow or red and white. The most notable was the Santa Fe which in the 1960s started a rebuild program for their cabooses in which the cars were painted bright red with an eight-foot-diameter Santa Fe cross herald emblazoned on each side in yellow. Some railroads, chiefly the Wabash Railway
The Wabash Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including track in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri and the province of Ontario. Its primary co ...
, Norfolk and Western
The Norfolk and Western Railway , commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precisi ...
and Illinois Central Gulf
The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also c ...
, also built or upgraded cabooses with streamlined cupolas for better aerodynamics and to project a more modern image.
Bay window
In a bay window caboose, the crew monitoring the train sits in the middle of the car in a section of wall that projects from the side of the caboose. The windows set into these extended walls resemble architectural bay window
A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room.
Types
Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or ...
s, so the caboose type is called a bay window caboose. This type afforded a better view of the side of the train and eliminated the falling hazard of the cupola. It is thought to have first been used on the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad
The Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad was a Class I railroad which operated in the state of Ohio. The company was founded in 1907 and opened its mainline between Mogadore and Akron, Ohio in 1912. Later reclassified as a short-line railroad, t ...
in 1923, but is particularly associated with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which built all of its cabooses in this design starting from an experimental model in 1930. The bay window gained favor with many railroads because it eliminated the need for additional clearances in tunnels and overpasses.
On the West Coast, the Milwaukee Road and the Northern Pacific Railway used these cars, converting over 900 roof top cabooses to bay windows in the late 1930s. Milwaukee Road rib-side bay window cabooses are preserved at New Lisbon, Wisconsin
New Lisbon is a city in Juneau County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,748 at the 2020 census.
History
The site of New Lisbon was used as a seasonal winter encampment by Ho-Chunk people, who called it (anglicized to ''Wa Du Shud ...
, the Illinois Railway Museum
The Illinois Railway Museum (IRM, reporting mark IRMX) is the largest railroad museum in the United States. It is located in the Chicago metropolitan area at 7000 Olson Road in Union, Illinois, northwest of downtown Chicago.
Overview
Hist ...
, the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad and Cedarburg, Wisconsin
Cedarburg is a city in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. Located about north of Milwaukee and in close proximity to Interstate 43, it is a suburban community in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The city incorporated in 1885, and a ...
, among other places.
The Western Pacific Railroad
The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route dire ...
was an early adopter of the type, building their own bay window cars starting in 1942 and acquiring this style exclusively from then on. Many other roads operated this type, including the Southern Pacific Railroad, St. Louis – San Francisco Railway, Katy Railroad
Katy or KATY may refer to:
People
* Katy, a short form of the name Katherine
* Katy (given name)
* Katy (Marvel Cinematic Universe), a fictional character
* Katy Perry
Places Serbia
* Kać, Serbia ( hu, Káty, link=no)
United States
* Katy, Mi ...
, Kansas City Southern Railway
The Kansas City Southern Railway Company is an American Class I railroad. Founded in 1887, it operates in 10 midwestern and southeastern U.S. states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and ...
, the Southern Railway, and the New York Central Railroad
The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Mid ...
.
In the UK, brake vans are usually of this basic design: the bay window is known as a lookout or ducket.
Extended-vision
In the extended-vision or wide-vision caboose, the sides of the cupola project beyond the side of the car body. Rock Island created some of these by rebuilding some standard cupola cabooses with windowed extensions applied to the sides of the cupola itself, but by far, the greatest number have the entire cupola compartment enlarged. This model was introduced by the International Car Company and saw service on most U.S. railroads. The expanded cupola allowed the crew to see past the top of the taller cars that began to appear after World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, and also increased the roominess of the cupola area.
Additionally, Monon Railroad
The Monon Railroad , also known as the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railway from 1897 to 1971, was an American railroad that operated almost entirely within the state of Indiana. The Monon was merged into the Louisville and Nashville Ra ...
had a unique change to the extended-vision cabooses. They added a miniature bay to the sides of the cupola to enhance the views further. This created a unique look for their small fleet. Seven of the eight Monon-built cabooses have been saved. One was scrapped after an accident in Kentucky. The surviving cars are at the Indiana Transportation Museum
The Indiana Transportation Museum ( initialized ITM, reporting mark ITMZ) is a railroad museum that was formerly located in the Forest Park neighborhood of Noblesville, Indiana, United States. It owns a variety of preserved railroad equipment ...
(operational), the Indiana Railway Museum (operational), the Kentucky Railway Museum
The Kentucky Railway Museum, now located in New Haven, Kentucky, United States, is a non-profit railroad museum dedicated to educating the public regarding the history and heritage of Kentucky's railroads and the people who built them. Originall ...
(fire damaged), and the Bluegrass Railroad Museum
The Bluegrass Railroad and Museum is a railroad museum and heritage railroad in Versailles, Kentucky, United States.
Operating out of the Woodford County Park, the Railroad offers 11-mile round trip excursions through the horse farms of Kentucky ...
(unrestored but serviceable). The remaining three are in private collections.
Transfer
A transfer caboose looks more like a flat car
A flatcar (US) (also flat car, or flatbed) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on a pair of trucks (US) or bogies (UK), one at each end containing four or six wheels. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry ...
with a shed bolted to the middle of it than it does a standard caboose. It is used in transfer service between rail yard
A rail yard, railway yard, railroad yard (US) or simply yard, is a series of tracks in a rail network for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading rail vehicles and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock or u ...
s or short switching runs, and as such, lacks sleeping, cooking or restroom facilities. The ends of a transfer caboose are left open, with safety railings surrounding the area between the crew compartment and the end of the car.
A recent variation on the transfer caboose is the "pushing" or "shoving" platform. It can be any railcar where a brakeman
A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The earliest known use of the term to describe this occupation occurred in 1833. The advent of through brakes, ...
can safely ride for some distance to help the engineer with visibility at the other end of the train. Flatcar
A flatcar (US) (also flat car, or flatbed) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on a pair of trucks (US) or bogies (UK), one at each end containing four or six wheels. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry ...
s and covered hopper
A covered hopper is a self-clearing enclosed railroad freight car with fixed roof, sides, and ends with openings for loading through the roof and bottom openings for unloading. Covered hopper cars are designed for carrying dry bulk loads, varying ...
s have been used for this purpose, but often the pushing platform is a caboose that has had its windows covered and welded shut and permanently locked doors. CSX
CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...
uses former Louisville & Nashville short bay window cabooses and former Conrail waycars as pushing platforms.
Transfer cabooses are not to be confused with Missouri Pacific Railroad
The Missouri Pacific Railroad , commonly abbreviated as MoPac, was one of the first railroads in the United States west of the Mississippi River. MoPac was a Class I railroad growing from dozens of predecessors and mergers. In 1967, the railroad ...
(MoPac) cabooses, as their cabooses were fully functional.
Drover's
Drover's cabooses looked more like combine car
A combine car in North American parlance, most often referred to simply as a combine, is a type of railroad car which combines sections for both passengers and freight.
Most often, it was used on short lines to carry passengers and their lugga ...
s than standard cabooses. The purpose of a drover's caboose was much more like a combine, as well. On longer livestock
Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animal ...
trains in the American West, the drover's caboose is where the livestock's handlers would ride between the ranch
A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most ofte ...
and processing plant. The train crew rode in the caboose section while the livestock handlers rode in the coach
Coach may refer to:
Guidance/instruction
* Coach (sport), a director of athletes' training and activities
* Coaching, the practice of guiding an individual through a process
** Acting coach, a teacher who trains performers
Transportation
* Co ...
section. Drover's cabooses used either cupolas or bay windows in the caboose section for the train crew to monitor the train. The use of drover's cars on the Northern Pacific Railway, for example, lasted until the Burlington Northern Railroad merger of 1970. They were often found on stock trains originating in Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...
.
Preservation and reuse
Although the caboose has largely fallen out of use, some are still retained by railroads in a reserve capacity. These cabooses are typically used in and around railyards. Other uses for the caboose include "special" trains, where the train is involved in some sort of railway maintenance; as part of survey trains that inspect remote rail lines after natural disasters to check for damage; or in protecting the movement of nuclear material within the United States. Others have been modified for use in research roles to investigate complaints from residents or business owners regarding trains in certain locations. Finally, some are coupled to trains for special events, including historical tours.
The Chihuahua al Pacífico Railroad in Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
still uses cabooses to accompany their motorail trains between Chihuahua and Los Mochis
Los Mochis () is a coastal city in northern Sinaloa, Mexico. It serves as the municipal seat of the municipality of Ahome. As of the 2010 census, the population was 362,613, which was 61 percent of the municipality's population.
Los Mochis is th ...
.
Cabooses have also become popular for collection by railroad museums and for city parks and other civic uses, such as visitor centers. Several railroad museums roster large numbers of cabooses, including the Illinois Railway Museum
The Illinois Railway Museum (IRM, reporting mark IRMX) is the largest railroad museum in the United States. It is located in the Chicago metropolitan area at 7000 Olson Road in Union, Illinois, northwest of downtown Chicago.
Overview
Hist ...
with 19 examples and the Western Pacific Railroad Museum
The Western Pacific Railroad Museum (WPRM) in Portola, California, known as the Portola Railroad Museum until January 1, 2006, is a heritage railroad and archives that preserves and operates historic American railroad equipment and preserves docu ...
at Portola, California
Portola ( ) is the only incorporated city in Plumas County, California, United States. The population was 2,104 at the 2010 census, down from 2,227 at the 2000 census. Portola is located on the Middle Fork of the Feather River and was named afte ...
, with 17. Many shortline railroads still use cabooses today. Large railroads also use cabooses as "shoving platforms" or in switching service where it is convenient to have crew at the rear of the train.
Cabooses have been reused as vacation cottages, garden offices in private residences, and as portions of restaurants. Also, caboose motels have appeared, with the old cars being used as cabins.
A bay window caboose numbered FCD-17 is still being used by the Philippine National Railways for non-revenue maintenance trains. Particularly, it was built in Japan in 1962 and is used as an inspection car by the Philippine National Police.
See also
* Brakeman's cabin
A brakeman's cabin (also brakeman's cab) or brakeman's caboose (US) (German: Bremserhaus) was a small one-man compartment at one end of a railway wagon to provide shelter for the brakeman from the weather and in which equipment for manually operat ...
* Brake van
Brake van and guard's van are terms used mainly in the UK, Ireland, Australia and India for a railway vehicle equipped with a hand brake which can be applied by the guard. The equivalent North American term is caboose, but a British brake van ...
* Crew car
* End-of-train device
The end of train device (ETD), sometimes referred to as an EOT, flashing rear-end device (FRED) or sense and braking unit (SBU) is an electronic device mounted on the end of freight trains in lieu of a caboose. They are divided into three catego ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
"The Wood Shanty Disappears"
from ''Southern Pacific Bulletin,'' January, 1962, pp 22–26
"The Colorful Caboose"
from ''Trains'' Magazine, August 2006
CBC Radio Archives
Talking about the end of the caboose in Canada (1989)
The Warrenton Caboose
How a restored N&W railroad caboose has become an integral part of a local community in Virginia
The Caboose Station at Romney
from the Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad
The Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad is a heritage railroad based in Romney, West Virginia.
The railroad operates excursion trains over a former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line that runs between Green Spring and Petersburg. The West Virginia S ...
website: has information on introduction of the bay window caboose
{{Authority control
*
Rolling stock of Canada
Rolling stock of the United States
Rolling stock of Mexico
Freight rolling stock