Jim,
The cab on #8 in the 1908 photo above is about 6' 2" long, about 6' 6" high to roof top edge, and about 8'6" wide. I say "about" for those measurements because this photo is somewhat distorted and introduces an uncertainty of 2" or so in the dimensions.
So, this cab appears very much like the cab in the #47 photo, both in dimensions ( though I couldn't get a good measure of width for #47, the view is too nearly side-on), and in construction: particularly, on both, the roof edges and windows look very much like the older wood cabs. So, as you wonder, so do I: what are these cabs made of? If, as appears likely, they're wood with metal sheathing, then that means there were at least two sizes in service around the turn of the century, the very common 5"2" long ones and these 6' - 6'2" ones. If that's true, then the later cabs with flush formed roof edges must have been total replacements, since those are surely all-steel. The story I have read in various places about the roof edges being simply trimmed off flush to produce the modern cabs would be incorrect.
By the way, all this is bad news for my projects. The C-16 cab is too big for my #30, which I've now measured to have had the 5'2" cab in the 1910 photos. Also, I discovered why the 5'2" cab on the PFM #13 looks so ridiculously narrow-- that's because it is! I never measured the width before, naively assuming that since they got the length and height right, the width would be too. Nope, that model cab is only 7'6" wide, not 7'10", and that's why the front doors look so silly (narrow!), as I had mentioned in a previous post. Bah!
oh well,
John
John
John Greenly
Lansing, NY