Is this Derrell's Eight-wheel caboose on the C&Sng???

[Jim Courtney]

God I love this site!  Arcane but authoritative discussion about all things C&S and pre-C&S!

A couple of years ago I ran across this photo on the net, I forget where (possibly one of the "other" discussion sites, before Roper lured me here).  I believe the photo is just east of Golden, looking west at the Front Range:



We can tell immediately that the date is at least 1899 or 1900.   Why?  Note the gondola ahead of the caboose.  As Prof. Derrell has taught us, the four individual angle irons at the corner and the slanted stake profile identify the car as one of the St Charles coal cars built in December 1898 and delivered in early 1899.  If we could see the entire car, it would likely be lettered in the "St Charles Roman" scheme, as on the box cars and tall reefers of the same order.

So this is a C&S caboose, granted just barely a C&S caboose, likely not yet re-lettered. At first glance it looks to be either 306 (later 1005) or 310 (later 1008):  Centered cupola with corner support wires, square windows, and passenger car style quarter-round corners. I bet if we could see outside the frame to the right there would be a straight up ladder.

"But wait, there's more!"  Note the gentleman to the right of the group, the one perched up on the caboose end railing.  Now enlarge the photo on your browser and note first his hands, then move your eye down to the rail and what do we see?   A wheel!   It's certainly not part of the gondola truck, out of frame to the right.  So it's a caboose wheel!  What's it doing up right under the end platform, behind the platform step?  Given the short wheel base of the four-wheel cabeese (no more than 9 feet, possibly only 6 and a half feet before rebuilding) if this was a 4 wheel car, the wheel should be behind the standing gent with arms folded.

So maybe this isn't 306 or 310. Could this be 303, adopted from the Utah and Northern back in the early 90's, riding on 4 wheel trucks?  Kind of tempts me to build a new underframe for my Overland 1002 and mount a pair of UP swing beam trucks!

So is this it, Derrell?  Do I win the prize?

Jim in the rainy Northwest

 

[Bill Uffelman]

If you look behind/below the gentleman who is casting the shadow on the car it looks like a bearing on a truck.

Years ago I recall LGB offering their version of the South Park caboose with 2 trucks -- must have been prescient.

Bill Uffelman

Grandparenting tonight in Vienna VA

On Saturday, January 31, 2015 7:36 PM, Jim Courtney [via C&Sn3 Discussion Forum] <[hidden email]> wrote:

God I love this site!  Arcane but authoritative discussion about all things C&S and pre-C&S!

A couple of years ago I ran across this photo on the net, I forget where (possibly one of the "other" discussion sites, before Roper lured me here).  I believe the photo is just east of Golden, looking west at the Front Range:



We can tell immediately that the date is at least 1899 or 1900.   Why?  Note the gondola ahead of the caboose.  As Prof. Derrell has taught us, the four individual angle irons at the corner and the slanted stake profile identify the car as one of the St Charles coal cars built in December 1898 and delivered in early 1899.  If we could see the entire car, it would likely be lettered in the "St Charles Roman" scheme, as on the box cars and tall reefers of the same order.

So this is a C&S caboose, granted just barely a C&S caboose, likely not yet re-lettered. At first glance it looks to be either 306 (later 1005) or 310 (later 1008):  Centered cupola with corner support wires, square windows, and passenger car style quarter-round corners. I bet if we could see outside the frame to the right there would be a straight up ladder.

"But wait, there's more!"  Note the gentleman to the right of the group, the one perched up on the caboose end railing.  Now enlarge the photo on your browser and note first his hands, then move your eye down to the rail and what do we see?   A wheel!   It's certainly not part of the gondola truck, out of frame to the right.  So it's a caboose wheel!  What's it doing up right under the end platform, behind the platform step?  Given the short wheel base of the four-wheel cabeese (no more than 9 feet, possibly only 6 and a half feet before rebuilding) if this was a 4 wheel car, the wheel should be behind the standing gent with arms folded.

So maybe this isn't 306 or 310. Could this be 303, adopted from the Utah and Northern back in the early 90's, riding on 4 wheel trucks?  Kind of tempts me to build a new underframe for my Overland 1002 and mount a pair of UP swing beam trucks!

So is this it, Derrell?  Do I win the prize?

Jim in the rainy Northwest

 

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NAML

[Keith Hayes]

Jim:

Thanks for posting.

The mountain looks awfully large for those west of Golden. The mountain in the image looks more like Mt. Princeton to me, but the track is heading straight towards the top, which does not make sense, unless this is at the west base of Trout Creek. I am not familiar with the many track configurations there but there seems to be too much track for that.

Those look like buildings on the left, and the skyline has what might be a school or courthouse lantern. Perhaps this image looks south from Buena Vista, and that is Mt. Antero in the background? That makes more sense to me.

Derrell, is this the hack that became 1002?

[Jim Courtney]

Keith,

I see your point, yes, this does look like the Arkansas Valley, and the brick buildings in the background do suggest Buena Vista.

[Chris Walker]

I was leaning towards B.V. but keep thinking Leadville although it's not gritty enough, too many trees. Those mountains don't quite line up right on the google streetview.  The big brick building also doesn't fit with this comparative view nor does the Depot show as fit with the trackage shown, being on the "mainline" and West.


http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/p15330coll22/id/252/rv/singleitem/rec/12

Still think its Leadville, the background pg340 Min Belt 1 is similar, the ground is similar to Leadville vs B.V. which is much flatter and strewn with boulders and scrub pine.

[Keith Hayes]

Chris thanks for posting this pic. I believe it looks west towards BV from the Midland Grade. When I wrote my previous post, I briefly thought it did not make sense, as the tower is on the left of the tracks, and yet the C&S tracks are east of the courthouse. May I amend my opinion to state that the photo is on D&RG rails? The current ROW is well west of the courthouse, and would better correspond with both the mountain and town buildings.

[Chris Walker]

I too wondered about the original B.V. D&RG but weren't the C&S off on their own by then, the date of the St Charles cars would be 3-railed to Leadville since 1890-ish?  Somewhere in the last few weeks I have seen plans for the changes in trackage there around B.V.-Nathrop but can't suddenly remember where...dammit, and there were several re-arrangements of the approaches to B.V.

This is a good one, to heck with the caboose wheels {:))

More B.V. this time without the Depot.


http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/p15330coll21/id/11817/rv/singleitem/rec/21

[Jim Courtney]

Great pictures, Chris.

The photo I posted with the caboose must be in the Buena Vista area, given the courthouse in the distance.

I think the location is southeast of town, looking northwest, perhaps from Macune or Schwanders.  Rick Steele's valuation map in the files section shows only Macune, and that location, though close to town, only had a wye and a siding.

I'm thinking this may be Schwanders, as it had a long coaling station and sidings.  At the turn of the century it was the junction on the Trout Creek Pass to Alpine Tunnel mainline with the short line into Buena Vista and the depot.  With the need to fuel and water helper engines headed both east and west up the respective passes, Schwanders is the only place I can think of that would have this much track.

[Derrell Poole]

Tch, tch, tch....


Back of photo.


There is something very odd about this caboose. It looks so familiar...


compare the details. Look at the roof details, the placement of the windows and is that part of the suspension behind whatever the second guy on the left is holding. I can't explain what looks like a wheel under the platform but I'm disappointed to say I don't think this is the car. Nice try Doc. Nice try.

[Chris Walker]

I keep looking at the large building on the left, it doesn't have a tower, but one shows in the background....

I went looking via Google Streetview and get this clear view to the NNW... at 38.844126,-106.128123



Your suggestion that it was more up on the rise at Schwanders/McCune, does anyone have a trackplan of there?

It wasn't 'til I looked at the map itself and that large building to the left which doesn't show in those McClure pictures it occured to me it may have been the  County Jail, an opposite side view here in this Muriel Wolle picture, maybe where the new High School is today.   I can't find any pictures of that building in with the Court House yet.http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/90335/rec/96

This is the old Wye area as far as I can determine, doesn't resemble anything like your Caboose picture.
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/p15330coll22/id/30803/rv/singleitem/rec/144

I'm out.

[Chris Walker]

I should have refreshed the page before posting, so it's a jack up picture?  Does that explain only one wheelset on the rail due to combining the two negs?

Still an interesting background perspective of B.V.

[Derrell Poole]

I don't know about the wheel. It really doesn't seem to fit the caboose - even if this wasn't 306. But as you can see the photo is a composite which makes it more "art" than fact. Doctor Courtney may have collected this photo from a post I did as a trick on one of the yahoo groups many years ago; "Where is this". Nobody replied so I never clarified the mystery. (That's just how I am! No one cares? I don't bother.) Or he may have found it somewhere else.

Keep looking guys. I appreciate all the help I can get - this is one I don't have solid answers for. I'm inclined to do some digging on the Denver and New Orleans and its Subsequents to see what 2106 might have looked like...time, folks. Time. Thanks.

[Derrell Poole]

I just want to say thanks, Bill for your expression of appreciation.

There are a lot of lurkers here; obviously. Fine! I'm not a collectivite person. As far as I'm concerned the labor of those who post here and take the time to respond are worthy of their effort. At the very least lurkers should occasionally speak up and just say thanks! How hard is that? This ain't no yahoo group! Click the "like" buttons and once in a while express that this is really meaningful to you. Thanks.

[Rick Steele]

I agree with you Derrell,

I couldn't figure out how the wheel fit in that photo either. No big deal, maybe that's why they're stopped, because a car ahead spit out a wheelset. Don't laugh it's happened.

As for the eight wheel caboose. There is the photo at Hancock showing what looks like either an eight wheel caboose or some sort of MOW car there.

I don't know if it came from the U&N or KC or wherever... Maybe it was a loused up attempt by a Master Car Builder at Armstrong to match the UP broad gauge common standard of the time, after a bout of too much bad beer and an 1880's pizza (Probably made with sausage before the advent Upton Sinclair).  Without a cupola, and way too heavy for the 4% grades.

In talking to Ken Martin, we both have come to the conclusion, as have you, that this car may have been the basis for C&S 912/089. It is either that or an ex-CC Baggage car. The windows look correct for the 912.

Just as an aside. Look at the trucks for this car. They are shorter with a bowed equalizer in the early photos, but later, in MOW service, the trucks seem to have a straight equalizer. Looks like the C&S foundry and car shops at 7th St. were busy as well.

I post this during Super Bowl Day because I want to make your watching uncomfortable watching the game with these unanswered questions lurking in the back of your heads.

Yes, I agree With Derrell. Lurkers, SPEAK UP. This is not a forum between those of us who like to pontificate, it's supposed to be everybody's forum.

Rick

[Jim Courtney]

Hey, Derrell, long time no talk!

Yes, I've always thought that this was the 306 c1900-1903, and have it filed on my computer with other photos of that car.  

I'm planning on building a model of the car, using an Overland 1005 for parts, sort of a dis-assemble by torch and re-assemble carefully project.  I only noticed the "misplaced'' wheel when I was studying the photo under magnification.  Likely, it is an illusion from the extreme forced perspective of the shot.

Now that I've drawn you into the discussion, a couple of questions:

Care to opine as to the location of the photo?  Do you think this is Schwanders?  I can't think of any other location in such proximity to Buena Vista with this much trackage.  Since the 306 was used a lot on the Alpine Pass line, perhaps the train is about to depart for Nathrop and the Chalk Creek canon.  Are there valuation maps of Schwanders for this era?  By 1918, I dont think much remained here.

As to waycars ("way-cooler" than caboose), you've published a lot about the evolution of the little cars from South Park / CoCen days though the rebuilding at the end of the first decade into the modern cars that we all know.  
Did all of the cars always have 9 foot wheel based undeframes, or did they originally have shorter 6-7 foot wheel bass underframes with all that neat suspension stuff :  Levers, leaf springs and coil springs in the middle?  
Were the frames first rebuilt c1905, perhaps lengthening to 9 foot wheel base, to allow adding air brakes per ever changing federal laws.  And the bodies then remodeled later, ie 1909-1913, to the configurations we all know?

The hard part of studying period photos for underframe details, is that there is always a rock or a bush or a group of Victorian garbed people standing in front of what you want to see.

[Derrell Poole]

Jim. The first figure I posted here is the back of the photo you posted. Tells where it was taken and when - AND that this is a composite photo. I'd be speculating as much as you as to when the cabooses were rebuilt pior to the 1908 to ??? but it would seem something took place early on after the TOC because of ICC rules that took affect in 1903. I don't have details on this. What were the wheel basis? Don't know.

There is another thing here too; We seem to have this notion that all of the SP cars were built without cupolas. The photo evidence seems to suggest this but where is that set in stone? I've always thought cabooses - waycars - came along earlier than we might imagine and in fact The Pueblo Dailey Chieften (3 June 1879) indicated 2 cars were sent to the DSP&P along with engines and cars (Rudnick - DSP&P Early Narrow Gauge FReight Car Guide - 1989). No answer to whether they stayed or not but this is record of sorts that conductors cars were on the line prior to 1880. Where the SP went with the idea after that is evident but very vague. In fact they may not have done anything. It may have been the UP as the RR came under that company's control  by 1881. The first recording of numbers I'm aware of started with no. 72 in 1882. But there were already 12 cars on hand by then; if the 1885 roster is to be believed (first O.R.E.G.) 60 - 79. There were a total of 23 numbers assigned by mid 1884; 60 - 82 but it doesn't seem there were ever more than 21 cars at a time - we don't know.

Those last cars  - anyone ever seen a photo of these that can be identified? The UP was building cars for all of its NG assets and we see U&N cars with cupolas. Were they built that way or improved later?

At any rate we seem to assume that a car with a cupola is a foreigner in the 1890s. Yet we don't notice that they seem to get as much if not more photo coverage - sure are a lot of photos for such rare animals. I am entertaining the idea that at least a few SP cabooses were either built with cupolas or later modified (in the early 90's?).

Consider for a moment the following cropped photo I've modified to use to make a point. The photo was given to me by Todd Hackett and I think I've modified it enough that he will forgive me for using that portion of it necessary here;
 
btw please don't copy this as it also contains my intellectual property.

There are 6 cabooses in this photo of the Como yards. HALF of them have cupolas. Are all of these cars foreigners? Maybe, There are several photos like this. If there were just a few cars then why do they show up so "often"?

Also. Please note the car at the tip of the brown arrow. To me it appears substantially longer than the other 5 cars all highlighted. Maybe Derrell's mystery car 1782? Whaddaya think?

[Robert McFarland]

Regarding the Hancock car,have you looked at Hayes Hendrick's DSP&P/CC/C&S passenger car website and the NARROW GAUGE ANNUAL issue from 2-4 years back  that had an article on the background of 912/089.It was supposed to have started life as a26' DSP&P boxcar.In its Hancock days it was a MOW car that in comparing with a HISTORIC ALPINE TUNNEL story was used by P.F.Barr and family while he was building Alpine Tunnel.

[prrshifter]

Rick

I am one of the lurkers on this list. I don't model C&S or other Colorado narrow gauge, but I do find it fascinating to read about.
Having just read both of Harry Brunk's books I now have some idea of what you folks are talking about. The discussion is great, as is the modeling. Trust me, you guys are inspiring others to improve on their modeling and their knowledge.
So a very big THANK YOU to all who post on this site. It has been a delight to read. Keep it up!

Jim Kehn
Ohio
On30, 2R O standard gauge, HO modeler. Retired railroader.

[Jim Courtney]

Whoa, Derrell!  Rick Steele is right, it's going to be hard to concentrate on the game with all this good stuff posted!  The Seahawks may have to win without me!

The photo is fascinating.  I see 2 center coupola cars at the extreme left and right margins, both of similar length, and similar in length to the 3 flat roofed waycars (one still white or yellow?) in front of the roundhouse. The car in the middle that you've marked is substantially longer.  If the 3 cars with coupolas are the "known" cars that became 303, 306 and 310, and they all happened to be in town the same day, I don't think you could discern a difference in the 13' bodies of 306 and 310 and the 14'10" body of the 303.  So I'd say the mystery car is somewhere in the 18-22' range.  Perhaps this is the elusive 8 wheel waycar.

I like how you think outside the box on this topic.  I've always considered 303, 306 and 310 intimately related, in a class by themselves, due to to their shared similarities and difference from other "standard" South Park waycars.  For that reason it was logical to assume they were all foreigners, all refugees from Utah.  But as you say, they could all be home grown Colorado cars, their differences a reflection of evolving UP building (or later shopping) practices.

Bear with me for a minute on the topic of early underframe wheel base, as it has a practical application for me.  I have an Overland #73 waycar without cupola that I want to paint and finish as a c1885 white car to go with my Berlyn Mason Bogie.  I obviously need to rebuild the underframe, as the model came with the "standard" post 1912 underframe and "C&S" pedestals.

Every published drawing of the early cars shows a 9' wheel base between the journals.  All 4 of your beautiful drawings, shamelessly ripped off by others, show a 9' wheel base.  Yet in a few old TOC photos the wheel base looks shorter.  The photo of the (likely) U&N car that Doug posted a few days ago has the same underframe details (again obstructed by stupid people who don't know how to not stand in front of a train while it's photographed), but the wheel base is appreciably shorter than the dead on side view of the 306 that you posted above.

The only real "official" C&S documentation that I have in hand is from my copy of the Equipment Folio #27, which must have been compiled after 1912, due to the modern numbers on the caboose sheets.  Even there, No 1005 and 1008 are rendered with center cupolas, not yet moved to the final end location and show a 9'1" wheel base; but the folio sheet for No. 1003 (old 304) with a not yet rebuilt body and no cupola has a recorded wheel base of only 6' 3"!!  Any idea when Folio #27 was compiled?

So, to your knowledge, is there any hard information that all original South Park way cars were built to a standard 9 foot wheel base??  Does anyone else know?

[Keith Hayes]

Darrell, thanks for posting this neat image.

I am seeing lots of lettering on the house cars. What looks like a diamond to me-is this "The Colorado Road" in a rectangular outline? And what is the lettering on the car to the right on the near track?

Regarding the WAYCARS, there sure are a bunch in Como at the same time. Also--and I don't intimately know the history here--all three of the cupolas in the image appear to be in the center of the car. How/ why did the cupolas migrate to the end on so many of the cars later in life?

And...why did Como have two water tanks?