Re: C&S caboose undercarriage timeline.

Posted by Jim Courtney on
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/the-caboose-that-never-was-tp8369p9491.html

Morning John,

I've stepped back from this topic for a few days to collected my thoughts about the C&S caboose underframes, wheel base, etc.

Frankly, I'm not sure what I believe any more, the entire topic seems a mess to me, every bit of surviving evidence (not much actually) seems full of contradictions.

As to the statement in Derrel's Outdoor Railroader article:

"...included equalizer bars and cross braces making it very difficult to adapt the brakes. The answer was to upgrade the undercarriage somewhere between 1903 and 1907 so crews could install and maintain the modern brakes."

I'd remind you, the article was published over 20 years ago.

In the "Eight Wheel Caboose . . . " thread of 2015, Derrel shared a lot more information, from a lot of document research that he had done over the interim 2 decades.

The thoughts expressed by Derrel, Ron Rudnick, Mal Ferrell and others are not an easy read. They are a series of thoughts expressed extemporaneously, in response to someones prior thought. The information therein isn't organized as a summary in a logical order.

I'm working in the hospital today and Friday without access to my own photo files, books and documents. I'm trying to go though the "Eight Wheel Caboose . . ." thread and extract and organize pertinent thoughts. I'll try to post them by the weekend.

Preview: Derrell quotes the June 1898 DL&G Annual Report: "12 cabooses with Westinghouse brakes and Selden couplers."
So, all or most of the DL&G cabooses to be inherited by the C&S, may well have had air brakes mounted to what-ever-the heck was the standard underframe in the mid to late 1890s, long before the 1908-12 rebuilding program.