I write a series of books in which I answer little mysteries of life sent in by readers. I know that cabooses are near-extinct these days. I was wondering if you could help me understand the factors that led to the demise of the caboose (economic? technological?). Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Best, Dave feldman@imponderables.com http://www.imponderables.com
Basic economics was the backbone. Through the mid-1980's your basic train crew had at least four people- engineer, conductor, and two brakeman. One of the brakemen and the conductor rode in the caboose on the rear while the engineer and the other brakeman rode on the locomotives. Several things happened in the same general time period that allowed for the elimination of cabooses: 1. Railroads re-nogiated union agreements to allow for the elimination of both brakemen on most trains. 2. Most if not all of the states had laws requiring the use of cabooses. The states all repealed those laws at about the same time. 3. Automatic rear end devices became available- generally called FREDs. These devices mounted on the rear coupler. They transmitted important information such as the pressure in the air brake line to the engineer vie telemetry and flashed a red light backwards. The better models allowed the engineer to start a brake application from the rear of the train. The technology replaced cabooses. The elimination of cabooses saved railroads vast amounts of money. Supplying and maintaining cabooses cost a lot of money, as did having to switch them on and off trains and then storing and further switching them at terminals. Eliminating cabooses also meant that much less dead weight that the locomotives had to move. That being said there are still a few applications where you will still find cabooses in use today. These are primarily in situations where a train crew has to make a long reverse movement. Regulations require a train crew member to protect the movement by riding on the last car, which can be dangerous under any circumstances. In such situations railroads will generally provide a caboose, although more often than not the caboose has been stripped of all hardware and crew amenities and is classified as a "shoving platforms". Jeff Moore Elko, NV
Jeff hit the nail on the head. Economics..... It cost about $2500 a month to maintain a caboose. Times that by a fleet of them and you can see why they were replaced.
Why the brakemen were no longer needed on the trains needs a little more explanation, IMO. Other people will know better than me, but I believe it is mainly the result of the air brake line on trains so brakemen no longer needed to go from car to car turning a brake wheel. I thought there were 5 crew on the train, a fireman (engineer in training on non steamers) up front. The brakemen were conductor in training and now the path is a conductor can move on to an engineer now that there are no longer firemen and brakemen. Am I correct?
Brakemen lasted long after air brakes became standard. There were many other duties they did other than "setting" brakes. In the steam era they were very busy throwing manual turnouts to take a siding, setting brake retainer valves before descending a long grades and resetting them at the bottom. (dynamic brakes on diesels did away with that job) They watched for hot boxes on the car journals before roller bearings became the norm. I am sure there were many other things that went away as technology marched on.
================================= Correct in that the path is from trainman to engineer. On the BNSF, the brakemans position is still an active position at least on the Chicago Division. The Collector positions on the commuter trains are brakemans jobs and there is a Passenger Brakemans extra board There are also brakemen on road switcher(locals) on the Chicago division because of the amount of pick-ups and set-outs done. Believe me, from having worked all of those jobs as a brakeman, there is plenty of work to do for 2 trainman. Charlie
Now that I think of it, the "Watching the train for defects" was a major function of the conductor and brakeman in the caboose. Everything from smoke coming from bearing boxes to shifted loads were watched for. Now there are track side detectors that do those jobs. Here is an old photo of mine showing a hot journal.
One of the shortlines I see used to run without either caboose or EOT. (They run extremely short trains). The FRA stepped in and told them to either use a caboose or buy an EOT. They now use a caboose. (The last train I saw was two locos, three cars, and a caboose). Harold
