the caboose that never was

[Dave Eggleston]

Jim,

You say that Derrell notes all cabooses came to the C&S in 1898 from the DL&G/South Park. What about 1725 & 1726 from the UPD&G/CCRR? Or have I missed something buried in one of the several threads of this topic?

[Jim Courtney]

Just to clarify, Derrell's thoughts were that of the 20 waycars built by/for the DSP&P (1879-1884), only 12 South Park cars survived the end of the DL&G receivership, to be passed off to the new C&S at the end of 1898. One of those cars made a round trip to Utah, and was assigned to the UPD&G on its return to Colorado, documentation existing that it was later formerly transferred to the DL&G roster, prior to the creation of the C&S.  Thus all South Park waycars that survived to be passed to the C&S (12 total) were originally Colorado built cars. There was no UN built car in the batch.

Colorado Central waycars 26 and 27, later 1725 and 1726, appear similar to to the DSP&P cars.  Derrell gives a build date of Oct/Dec of 1883 for these cars. During the UPD&G years, they were numbered 61 and 62, becoming C&S 300/1000 and 301/1001, the latter car scrapped in 01/1915.

There was a third car, UPD&G 63 that was of nebulous origin, possible prior number of 1727 or 1782.  It became C&S caboose 302 in 1900 but was converted to an outfit car, renumbered 087 in 1905. No one really knows where this car came from, what it looked like, or what eventually happened to it. Much of Derrell's discussion in the "Eight Wheel Caboose thread concerns this 3rd car.

When the C&S was created, it inherited a total of 15 cabooses from the predecessor roads, 3 from the UPD&G and 12 South Park cars from the DL&G.

[Dave Eggleston]

Thanks for that clarification, it matches what I understood. Just got confused by the wording!

[John Greenly]

Jim,

thanks so much for this post, it's extremely helpful to have your line of reasoning so clearly laid out.  As we are possibly making some real changes to the received wisdom on C&S cabooses,  I'm very concerned that we make a clear distinction between what is factually established and what is historically informed theorizing.  Your post seems to me a perfect example of how we should do that.  

If we proceed like this, we won't make the kind of mistake that appears to have been made in the past.

I'll happily leave the Talmudic reading of the folios to you and others.  I have nothing to add about 308/1006; I simply have no information.  I sure wish we knew for certain how and when those sheets were originated and updated.  

Within the limits of present information, I'm not willing to state that all the cars were originally built with the short wheelbase.  It is a fact that we have no counterexample, no photo or any other information that demonstrates an original long-wheelbase car. But also we have no proof that there wasn't one or more.  

We do know for certain that there was a short wheelbase undercarriage used on a number of the cars, probably originally. While hoping for more and better photographic or other evidence, I'm proceeding with a reverse engineering approach, to try to figure out what the short wheelbase undercarriage was, so as to try to understand why the railroad used such a thing.  Ohh, for a clear photo….

many thanks,
John

[snapped_bolt]

   Hi, all

      Am I missing something here? The "truck" on that shorty caboose is about 1/2 the length of the truck on the box immediately preceding it. So the caboose, having 4-wheel trucks, has wheels about 12-13" in diameter? Really?
      This may be the only known picture of "clasp" brakes on a caboose! Perhaps the hand brake is completely separate from the air system.
      I suppose it could also be an explanation for "vanished" cabooses. In that case, clearly the caboose has been converted to a flanger (which didn't perform as well as planned). Vaulted right off the bridge!

     Cheers!

       Stan
       

[John Greenly]

Hi Stan,

you're certainly correct.  This was in my later post, last Dec. 18.

quote:

<Well, okay.  I've taken a long break from the caboose undercarriage woes, but came back to it in the last couple of weeks, and I have a few things to add: a couple of scant facts, a review of my earlier measurements, and, of course, some new speculation.

First of all, after returning to this and checking everything over again, I believe I still agree with my conclusions about the photos we have on this thread, with one exception.  

The caboose on the bridge in the snowy Georgetown photo cannot be an eight-wheeler, there just isn't anywhere near enough length under there unless the trucks have internal brake shoes and about 3' wheelbase.  Just compare the length under the caboose with a truck on the boxcars ahead of it and you can see the problem.  I don't know what's under there, but I'll bet it's four wheels on a long wheelbase (a CC car) and maybe some other stuff hung down there.  

Otherwise, I believe all the photos are, as I remarked at the time, either impossible to measure or consistent with the short wheelbase, except for the CC caboose at Beaver Brook, which probably has a long wheelbase.  (short = 6'3" or so, long = 9')>

Cheers,
John

[Chris Walker]

John,
reading your comments regarding the "Snowy" caboose, the C&S built GTRR Caboose #400(2nd) in 1912 14ft2in overall, 10ft6in x 6ft on 20"wheels double-trucked. fwiw.

While looking at pictures of Golden I noticed this, has all the hallmarks of a Bobber without Cupola, and thought I'd add it here.


Colorado School of Mines Photo via DPL
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/7020

[Robert McFarland]

Looks like a steam dummy.Check out the loco doing some switching in the yards over by the freight station

[Jim Courtney]

While searching for the photo of the elusive UPD&G St Charles boxcar, I came across this mid to late 1890s photo of another DL&G caboose with cupola, still seems to be painted yellow:



Ronzio collection in Margaret Coel's Goin' Railroading, page 69.


The text locates the photo as just above Hancock, coming downgrade from Alpine Tunnel.
The UP lettering on the boxcars and the McConnell stack both suggest late 1890s.
The locomotive is identified as DL&G 273, later C&S oilburner number 70.

Sorry John, no visible underframe to measure.

[Dave Eggleston]

I've been following this thread with great interest. A lot of discussion of the "odd" under frame on the waycars/cabooses that actually was not all that odd at the time. For contemporary reference here's a great image from the 1879 Car Builder's Dictionary (p238) that I haven't seen on any of the waycar threads:



There is a key difference from the under frames typically shown in Brommer's plan or the one done for Randy Hee's color analysis: The Pennsylvania car uses rubber springs rather than metal coil springs for the suspension at the pivot. Rubber can-shaped springs were not unusual at the time as an alternative to metal.

The car has a 9' wheelbase, with a roughly 14'6" long body and a bit under 20' over the endsills. So the wheelbase is roughly 2X the gauge. Could this have been a proportion read by the South Park that lead to using a 6'3" wheelbase on a 3' gauge railroad? I doubt it but I just realized the weird ratio coincidence between these cars as I wrote this post.

[John Greenly]

Dave, welcome to the caboose discussion!  

yes, the 4-wheel equalized undercarriage with the center-pivoted equalizer bars was quite common on bobbers on standard gauge roads up to when 4-wheel cars were outlawed on many lines in the first decade or two of the 20th century.  The D&RG had ones like this on the narrow gauge.  The famous photo of C&S 306 is as far as we know the single and only photo, or evidence of any kind, that this type of undercarriage was used on the C&S or its predecessors.  The wheelbase of 306 was 9 ft, and it's apparently been the basis of all models of South Park waycars.  The 6'3" wheelbase undercarriage partially visible in the infamous photo of 313 at Blackhawk is definitely not of this equalized type, and our other, poor images of the short-wheelbase waycars also appear not to be the equalized type.   We don't know exactly what the short-wheelbase undercarriages did look like though, so we're stuck, until somebody (OH, PLEASE!!!)  unearths a photo with good detail, or- dare I even hope- a drawing.

Your comment about the proportion of wheelbase to track gauge is an interesting one.   In the period from the beginning of railroad car trucks up to around 1880 or somewhat later,  truck wheelbases evolved from short to long.  In the early days it was thought that 4-wheel truck wheelbases needed to be short to avoid excessive wear on curves: the longer the wheelbase, the further off perpendicular to the rails the two axles of a truck would be on a curve, resulting, they thought, in excessive wear and even increased tendency to jump the track.  Gradually longer wheelbases were found to perform well and ride better than short ones.  I think it's likely that the DSP&P waycars were originally built with the short wheelbase because of this kind of thinking, and indeed as you say, could have been scaled from successful standard gauge cars.  Also, the longest wheelbase of trucks on the 3' gauge in the early 1880's when the waycars were built was about 6', on some Pullman passenger cars.  So 6' or so for the cabooses would not have been a stretch, while 9' would have been a substantial departure from established good practice for a 4-wheel truck at the time.

John

[John Greenly]

Chris, yes,  you're right, if some very short trucks were lying around the C&S shops, like those on the GTRR car but for 3' gauge, maybe the "snowy" caboose did have 8 wheels after all….

Why are all the early caboose photos so uselessly poor?  Photographers in those days just didn't have their priorities right, they always wasted all their time shooting the steam-belching other end of the train!

And, Jim,  that's a great photo of the caboose with cupola, a really good addition to this thread.  But why oh why did that pile of ties have to be just there!!

arrrgh,
John

[Jim Courtney]

John,

Why are all the early caboose photos so uselessly poor?  Photographers in those days just didn't have their priorities right, they always wasted all their time shooting the steam-belching other end of the train!

And children were also a distraction (C&S cabooses are always more important than children!).



Photographer unknown, Courtney collection.


I puchased this photo on eBay about three years ago and posted it: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.41377.n7.nabble.com/Vintage-photos-C-amp-S-engine-9-and-caboose-312-1009-c1909-11-td3603.html


This may be the earliest photo of a rebuilt C&S caboose, probably number 312/1009, as discussed in the post.

Had the photographer framed the photo better, we would be able to see, not only the new, modern 9 foot underframe, but we would know whether it was numbered 312 (pre-1911) or 1009 (post-1911) and be better able to date the photo!

[Dave Eggleston]

John, thanks for the greeting. I've just returned to the "C&S+prior lines" after a 25 year hiatus. The last South Park model I worked on dates to 1991-92, a Grandt kit chopped into a waycar with scratch built undercarriage based on Brommer's plans, the best I had access to at the time, as a test. Man, did I make a lot of mistakes on that car given what I've read on this forum!

The suspension running gear in that Brommer plan strikes me as a best guess back in the day when there was no information at all, and is rumored to be was based on that Carbuilder's Dictionary drawing I shared, an idea that I was told by someone, maybe Dave Garcia or one of the Schwedlers. Don't take this as fact, it's something I heard in passing 30 years ago but tend to agree with. The original Finelines article with Brommer's plan and the later Don Winter kit instructions don't elaborate on this, sadly. I can't confirm this story to be true, but people do look to what other railroads did to answer unknowns.

I guess the cars could've alternatively ridden on sprung journal boxes without linked suspension like the first D&RG 4-wheel cars, a far cheaper and easier to maintain solution. But I do like the suspension as seen on 306 a lot better. So I'm biased. I'm not sold on the cars riding on a converted passenger truck; I'm more inclined to accept that the design is an adaptation of a specific design known to the South Park or UP shops based on contemporary passenger and freight truck technology. Given the roughness of the South Park track and the short wheelbase, the suspension shown in the Brommer plan seems very reasonable to me, to provide more of a stable base than just sprung journals.

I'm not adverse to the idea that one or more cars concurrently sported different running gear as the years passed and that the shops may have tested or adapted the original design as they became aware of different/new technology (through exposure to cars, the Car Builder's magazines or new staff with new knowledge showing up). The waycars must've racked up more mileage than any other piece of equipment, given they were tacked onto almost every train and there were only a handful of them. The size, the mileage and the conditions must've been horrendous on those cars. I'll bet they were in the shops frequently. 306 could, in my mind, be argued to be an example of a test of a suspension idea a few years earlier. Or it could be the original design. Pictures, we need stinking pictures!

I'm also very intrigued and quite sold on Jim Courtney's reasoning about most cars being of shorter wheelbase as built but extended to 9' later in life. As Darrell pointed out in the 8-wheel thread, the bodies are almost all 12-13' long so 6'3" plus or minus for original wheelbase is very intriguing. But then, nothing is a given. It all just reminds me that as I settle on a period to model (I am looking at 1887-89 or 1898-99 currently) I am going to have to make some spectacular compromises that will likely be proven wrong over time!

[Jim Courtney]

Richard Farmer emailed me asking for further info on the photo that I posted above. Richard and his brother are lovingly restoring C&S caboose 1008, discovered in a Northridge, CA, back yard.

Richard noted and asked:

I found a post in which you included a photo which showed two crew members sitting on top of the cupola of a caboose, upon a closer look some of the detail of the car looked somewhat familiar. Although not very clear in the photo the corners of the car appear to be curved, the windows are not double hung and it has a cupola centered on the roof. Also this is the division where the car was assigned, certainly lots of evidence but no way to really know for sure is this 1008.

We are sure the 1008 had a center cupola as evidenced by the 4 centered mortises cut in the top plate of the side frame, which we have. We have been looking for a photo of 1008 with her center cupola for some time with no success, was there any further information with the photo when you found it?

I replied:

"If you are referring to this photo that I posted on the Forum, no I don’t have any further information.




Just the info in the caption, locomotive later C&S 70, location just upgrade from Hancock, coming down from Alpine Tunnel. The McConnell stack suggests late 1890s.

But I do think that there is a good chance that the caboose in the photo may well be DL&G 1514, later C&S 310 (1899) later rebuilt and renumbered to your C&S 1008.

The surviving folio sheet from Folio 27 that describes 1008 and 1005 is the only sheet to include 2 car numbers, implying 306/1005 and 310/1008 constituted a 2 car “class” within the inherited DL&G cabooses.




Derrell Poole has suggested that Folio 27 was first compiled in 1899-1900. As new freight cars were purchased or built in subsequent years, new sheets were drawn or added. Likewise when inherited cars were removed from service, sheets were discarded. The "Contents" page of my copy of Folio 27 notes it was last updated in 1923. Sometimes, rebuilding was expressed as mere updating of the dimensions without changing the image. Occasionally, new drawings with new image were done to reflect a substantial change in the car, like caboose 1007.

Derrell suggested that the original images for the inherited cars (including the cabooses) were likely traced from similar UP/DL&G folio sheets that came with all the inherited records of the UPD&G and DL&G.

If you accept that premise, then 306 and 310 came to the new C&S already having center cupolas, square windows, passenger car style rounded corners and an undercarriage with a 9’-1” wheel base. I suspect they were rebuilt at the same time, in Denver, sometime in the mid to late 1890s, as identical twins.

We have a good photo of 306 as it arrived on the C&S from the DL&G:




And this photo at Como is likely also 306/1005:




Note in both photos, the small lateral roof walks at both ends of the cupola.

But there are several photos of a near identical caboose to 306/1005, no legible number, but without the lateral roof walks:




In Tenmile Canon, likely DL&G pre-1899.

And then this one as well:




After automatic couplers (post-1903), derailed somewhere on the Alpine Tunnel line. If this is the same car as in the prior photo, it appears to have a ladder on only one end, unlike 306/1005.

I believe that both of these photos, and the first photo above, are of your C&S 310/1008. They are consistent from photo to photo, show a car nearly identical to 306/1005, but with the same subtle differences.

And this photo could include C&S 310/1008 just after the 1908-1910 rebuild:




This Pitkin photo can be dated to August-October of 1910, due to certain freight cars in the photo. The short, tall, boxy proportions of the car, along with what my eye sees as a square side window suggests 1005 or 1008.

Can I prove all this – no, just my speculation, until another photo with a legible number shows up."

Any comments or other thoughts on C&S 306/1005 and 310/1008, that might be of use to the Farmer brothers??
__________________________________________

PS: I suggested that Richard start a "C&S Caboose Restoration" thread here and post occasional updates as to progress made.

[South Park]

  Jim,

  Methinks the photo of 306/1005 is of some place other than Como.
...  unless Como had a lot of trees and substantial buildings I have
never seen before !  Those background mountains don't look right
either.

[Robert McFarland]

TOC photoshop-the background is Buena the foreground might be or is Como.This was covered on another thread a few years back.

[Robert McFarland]

I believe the building on the left is the BV jail.

[Jim Courtney]

Yes, SP,

The second photo that I believe is C&S 306/1005 was posted by Derrell Poole a few years back.

The photo was printed with two negatives by Westerman: The train/caboose, the tracks and the people are from one photo taken at Como, "September 21, 1900."

The background is a view of Buena Vista and the Collegiate Range.

See: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.41377.n7.nabble.com/Is-this-Derrell-s-Eight-wheel-caboose-on-the-C-amp-Sng-td567.html


Back of photo:




Some nice details of the caboose in the photo though . . .

[South Park]

  Most interesting ...

  I have spent the last 40 years learning every bend, angle, and backdrop
of the South Park ops area (still learning) and this one just did not jive !!!

  Good to know I am not totally washed up !  Hehehehe !  

  Leads me to wonder why Westerman would fuse a background into a
different shot like this ???