Re: Short wheel base South Park / C&S cabooses.

Posted by Jim Courtney on
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/the-caboose-that-never-was-tp8369p9421.html

Is this, then, the only known photo of a caboose showing the short wheelbase undercarriage, or are there others?

Probably not.

After the "Caboose 1008 Restoration" clinic at the Denver NNGC, I spent about an hour with the Farmer Brothers and Randy Hees chatting about caboose and freight car colors and looking at caboose photos on my tablet.

I started noticing some things, that I hadn't before.

Consider this enlargement from the late 1890s Como photo that Todd Hacket posted:




Three DL&G cabooses all in yellow (at least light color). Two with flat roofs, the one in the center with center cupola. Using an architects rule, the three cars all seem to have the same body length. Only the flat roof car on the left has the under frame visible. Assuming the caboose body is about 14', the wheel base to me seems to be about 6' 3".  So this might be another of the earlier cars.

Then, there is this c1900-1901 photo of a C&S freight in the siding at Braddocks, waiting to meet a pasenger train:


In Digerness, The Mineral Belt Volume II


No discernible number is visible. Can't tell for sure, but the wheel sets on the under frame seem to be inset quite a bit from the platform steps, like it has a short wheel base relative to the body. Perhaps you can perform your perspective magic on the photo and estimate the wheel base.

Then there is this photo that Doug Heitkamp posted a couple of years ago, of an unknown, perhaps Utah Northern caboose:




The under frame obviously has a pretty short wheel base, though we really don't know the origins of the car. It sure has obvious similarities to the South Park flat roofed cars.

I've wondered lately, whether Derrell and all of us have gotten it wrong all along--maybe all the South Park / DL&G cabooses had short wheel bases before they were rebuilt in 1908-1912. The 9' wheel base may be a modern rebuild convention and we may have assigned the same wheel base to the original cars in error.

On the other hand, there is the 1006 folio drawing, which indicates a 9' wheel base before rebuilding.

And there is this famous photo of C&S 306, newly re-lettered c1900-1901:


Grandt's Narrow Gauge Pictorial VIII.


The wheel base of the under frame matches the later cars, but has UP style journal lids and the original oddly sprung undercarraige.  It is consistent with the Folio 27 drawings of numbers 1005 and 1008:




The drawing shows the cars with center cupola, but modern ladders.  Does the folio reflect the original or rebuilt cars with end cupola, the image not having been updated??  The wheel base is list as 9' 1". So what gives with this? Is this the pre-1908 wheel base or a variation of the modern rebuilt under frame wheel base.

And we don't even know for sure the origins of this car. Due to their differences from the other South Park cars, some have speculated that 1002, 1005 and 1008 were ex-UN cars that arrived as refugees from Utah in the 1890s, because they were all similar, with center cupolas, quarter-round corners and square side windows.

But it is also possible that one or more or all were actually South Park cars, originally flat roofed, that were upgraded with cupolas sometime in the 1890's. Consider the car with the center cupola in the first (Como) photo above. It has paired double pane windows, like the other South Park flat roofed cars, not square windows like on 1002, 1005 and 1008.

I've found it a whole lot easier to model the early C&S if you don't know too much about it and don't think too much about it!