Re: Eight wheel Caboose on C&Sng?

Posted by Jim Courtney on
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Eight-wheel-Caboose-on-C-Sng-tp488p1916.html

So what is your current thinking of the origins of C&S 303 / 1002?  I couldn't quite follow your thinking on this.  Do you believe this was the "12th car" (he says, sounding like a Seahawks / narrow gauge fan)?  

I'm becoming more convinced that a lot of rebuilding occurred in the 1890s, and your arguments that 1005 and 1008 are rebuilt South Park cars is convincing.  It would appear that under the later DL&G (Trumbull) management, a lot of dabbling in modernization and rebuilding was going on:  Two of the light Brooks 2-6-0s rebuilt to heavier engines, cupolas being added to cabooses, written evidence that the cabooses arrived on the C&S in 1899 with many, if not most, already having modified underframes with added air brakes.

Flat out, gut feeling:  Do you think that 303 /1002 was a UN car, or another rebuilt South Park car?  Could it have been identical to 1005 and 1008 when rebuilt in the 1890's and the longer car body a result of the 1908-1915 C&S rebuilding program?  Perhaps the first car rebuilt with the modern underframe with the new C&S cast journal pedestals, a new longer body, but retaining its center cupola, with later cars rebuilt to the new standard of 1908 with end cupolas?

For that matter, if we assume that all surviving (post 1915) C&S cabooses are of South Park and Colorado Central origin (i.e. no foreign cars stayed to become C&S cars, though they may have visited during the late 1880s and early 1890s during UP management), is there any evidence that any of the long body cabooses that survived (1000, 1002, 1003, 1009) had the longer body dimensions prior to the 1908-1915 rebuilding program?  And why, after 4 cars with rebuilt longer bodies, did the C&S shops say "screw it!" and rebuild the surviving cars of original length with modern features and end cupolas?

This is very timely information for me.  All of these recent caboose threads (and this discussion in particular) have inspired me to get on with re-detailing, painting and lettering my Overland bobbers for my chosen layout date of June, 1909.  The brass bodies are soaking in lacquer thinner as we speak, getting ready to remove a lot of details and add others with my resistance soldering set.  One of them is C&S 1002 which has a date for a reverse makeover to 303.  I'd like to avoid an obvious goof, but realize that any caboose model of 1909 will be an exercise in speculation;  I'd just like it to be educated speculation.