Rare C&S relic located at the Colorado Railroad Museum

[Richard Farmer]

Actually the ratchet and pawl, found on the brake wheel staff of a caboose or freight car is not all that rare but an authentic C&S set of these is hard to find, seeing that there are only 3 caboose remaining. My brother and I have been looking for these for several years to include in our restoration of 1008 but with the exception of those seen on 1009 and 1006 no luck.
The Colorado Railroad Museum has been a great resource to us throughout our restoration project providing journal boxes, grab irons, cheek plates, copies of historic documents and drawings of various parts. We have the good fortune to know Jeff Taylor, Curator of Equipment and Rolling Stock, CRRM (we met Jeff years ago when he worked on the 3’ gauge Calico and Ghost Town Railroad at Knott’s Berry Farm). It was Jeff who located an authentic C&S (actually cast on the pedestal, impossible to find) caboose sink at the museum which he helped us to acquire.
At some point I mentioned to Jeff my search for the ratchet and pawl when we were at the museum and he mentioned he had one and would be willing to loan it to us to have castings made using the original parts as our patterns.
Well the parts arrived from Colorado yesterday, they will be cleaned up measured and a sketch made before I take them to the foundry next week.
Thank you to Jeff and the Colorado Railroad Museum for allowing us to use these relics.
Richard and Bob Farmer

[Kurt Maechner]

Awesome find!  Where did the CRRM originally find these odds and ends like this and the pedestal sink?  It's amazing what a treasure trove they have!
Thanks for sharing!
Kurt

[Richard Farmer]

That’s a great question Kurt. Jeff and I talked about where those items came from just yesterday. The fact of the mater is we don’t really know, does anybody? There is no doubt that they are both of C&S vintage since they have part numbers and the C&S logo cast on the parts. They were most likely acquired when many of the museum founders were still active but as far as we know there is no inventory of the many small parts in the museums collection which could provide that information. This type of ratchet and pawl are not unique to caboose as far as I know. Jeff told me that he recently saw the same set on 1006 in Silver Plume and that 1009, which is at the museum has the correct ratchet but a different pawl, something Jeff intends to correct when I return the parts after I finish with them.
We are pretty sure that when the cars were put out of service in 1942 in Leadville both cars were stripped of metal parts and were used as sheds, 1009 can be seen in the Narrow Gauge Pictorial serving in that capacity. 1006 was brought to Silver Plume by the C&S in running order and is the only surviving caboose with all original parts. Both 1006 and 1009 have sinks, 1008 did not have one when we acquired her. Maybe Bob Richardson found the sink we wound up with in some scrap pile, including the parts from 1008, recognized what it was and saved it as a unique piece of C&S history. So maybe the sink we have has finally found its way back home to 1008, no one knows for sure, but it makes a good story.

[Kurt Maechner]

I just got done reading Chasing Trains by Bob Richardson where he chronicles all the crazy train adventures he went on in his life.  When he gets to the Colorado portion it is quite fascinating how he just collected (and often had to pay for) as much 'stuff' as he could get his hands on because some of these dying railroads were bent on scrapping or burning as much as they could.  I guess what surprises me is that he somehow got some C&S parts because he didn't really start doing the salvaging until the late 40s and early 50s and the C&S was all gone by then.  I wonder if some of the C&S pieces showed up amongst the Rio Grande Southern stuff he got since they received that slew of cars in 1937.