Re: Eight wheel Caboose on C&Sng?

Posted by Derrell Poole on
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Eight-wheel-Caboose-on-C-Sng-tp488p1920.html

Richard, the cars went to the WP&Y in 1943 probably via the Chicago Freight Car Company. The Chronicle in Vol. VIII is not entirely correct in this regard. C&S 1005 became WP&Y USA 90851 as caboose 90851. It was reno'd. in 1944 to 851 and scrapped 1945. C & S caboose 1003 became USA caboose 90852 and was wrecked 1943. It was set out as a car inspector shack thereafter and went up in smoke in 1958.

I can understand your confusion and I'm not here to dispute that 1008 could have come from off line. I don't see strong evidence that it did, round corners, placement of the cupola, etc. notwithstanding. Those are not strong indication to me that another RR built them - frankly the UP built most of the cars at Omaha anyway. But you have the car in hand and may sense things a little differently.

The bigger issue concerns the Westinghouse brakes. The DL&G Annual Reports are not very specific. The cabooses as a class were listed with Whse Brakes but that doesn't distinguish whether all of the cars had auto brakes or just some of them. I don't see auto brakes on 306.

I'm not sure how many times any of the cars were rebuilt. It would seem that in the early '90s there was a surplus of cabooses as they dropped 5 cars between 1889 and 1993. When the Tunnel was reopened and the Trumble Magic came into full force it appears they encountered a bit of a pinch. Well at least a little one as one more car seemed to be enough; but not really if the car had been on line all along. So if they needed to rebuild cabooses multiple times I'm confident they would have done it

Would adding a cupola require a rebuild (I've never rebuilt a caboose - not a 12" to the foot one). The photo of 306 doesn't cause me to believe it was substantially different from a pre cupola car - but it is just a 2-D photo. And for brake cylinders? I don't know the details of  the original DSP&P frames to be able to assess how heavy they actually were - obviously the suspension was inconvenient to our perception of a brake cylinder.

Sadly neither one of us have the proof to say with certainty this is what happened or that was the case. I wish we had more but for the most part I've shared what I know - including documents and drawings. In 1933 the C&S took a huge pile of paper out into the yard and burned it... a lot of answers went up in smoke; I'm sure.

Keep up the good work.