My brother, who is as much an airplane freak as I am a railroad foamer, is always surprising me with photos he digs up. Here is one from 1978 he pulled out of one of his boxes of aircraft photos.
Russ, much as I hate to do it, I've gotta disagree with your title. If my eyes don't fail me, the number on that beaut is 13805, which puts it in a series (13715-13814) built by MoPac in DeSoto 1977-1978 as road cabooses. The line built something around 250 of these type of cabooses from '77 to '82. Transfer hacks had large stencilling on the side advertising their status or the yard they were assigned to. Nevertheless, that's a wonderful picture with a whole host of fallen flags represented. Thanks for sharing!
I guess whenever I see a cheese box on a raft with huge front and back porches, I think transfer caboose. The location would have been weird for a transfer caboose too. Heading cross country between Houston and Dallas. I used to see these parked at Settigast Yard in Houston but never saw one on a train.
I saw several of these thru Van Buren, AR. I called 'em "doghouse" cabooses, because that's what they looked like to me- a doghouse on wheels. No telling what the crews called them, though........
I kitbashed one of these cabooses in HO scale, and wrote an article about it for the "Cowcatcher Round-Up" magazine a while back.
I had to go back and update my post because the photo link was broken. Here is another version of the same photo without the cropping. I think my brother was interested in the clouds.
If any of you want a real one of those check out Fairfield Iowa. there is a rail car seller there and he has a ton of those. Dont feel bad straw we all thought those were transfer jobs as well.
There are three of these cabooses still working for the Union Pacific in Pryor,OK they keep em for back up movements in the industrial park area. I'm heading that way tomorrow. I'll see if I can grab some pics. Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Jenkins
I was in Arkansas in the late Seventies when these cabooses (cabeese?) were being introduced. At least some of the MoPac employees called them "party barges".
Oh, all right. Obviously I'm remiss in not having yet shot this thing in action. I'll try to figure out when the UP is sending the Kimberley Clark train through this weekend and see if I can fix that. Any requests for detail shots? No guarantees, but I'll try.
Got lucky. The train runs down the expressway, which makes it hard to get close. But today they stopped with the 'party barge' right at the end of an overpass, and I was able to climb the embankment and get nice and close. Basically, this thing is only used as an eight-wheeled FRED. And I don't even know if you can call it that any more, since it has been a few years since anyone bothered to charge up the flashing light, or replace the bulb, or whatever it needs to flash again.
Usually the light only flashes during hours of darkness. Basically in daylight you can see the train.
Don't really know, but they look cheaper to build. Well, this old girl never flashes any more, not even at midnight. Of course, the branch she traverses isn't exactly heavy traffic. Dark territory isn't much of a problem when there's never more than one train on the route.
