1906 Caboose
edited by David Barth, 12 December 2009.
Courtesy The Forney Museum of Transportation at 4303 Brighton Blvd., Denver,
Colorado 80216. Photos were taken in May 2009.
The little wood shanty that used to trail behind a string of freight cars has undergone many changes in the past
hundred years. In the mid 1800s, train crews used to build box-like shelters on spare flat cars to shield their
cooking fires. Around 1900 converted box cars with sliding doors were used.
Cupola-topped wooden cabooses, like this one, became popular after World War I. They were a rolling office, with
hard benches, feather dusters, a coal bin for stove fuel, kerosene lamps, and a “lazy board” for sleeping. Later,
steel cabooses with sleek bay windows of shatterproof glass, an automatic oil heater, electric lights, refrigerator,
drinking fountain, radio-telephone, and specially-designed Pullman-type crew seats replaced wooden cabooses.
This wood-bodied caboose was built by American Car & Foundry Company in 1906 and given the number 202. Originally,
it had side doors and a metal roof. It had a sleeping capacity of eight. In 1912 it was renumbered 10501. The end
platform was modified and extended in January 1924. In October 1944 it was rebuilt without the side doors. The
primary service area for this caboose was the Argo yards.
The origin of the caboose is uncertain. The most generally accepted story of its beginning is that a man named Nat
Williams, a freight conductor on the Auburn & Syracuse Railroad during the 1830s, made it his custom to sit in the
last car of a freight train on a box or barrel and direct the train's operation. As trains and runs grew longer,
some railroads provided platform cars for their train crews, and eventually converted box cars for crews to use as
shelters.
Even the origin of the word caboose is disputed. Railroad historical authority, D. L. Joslyn, a retired Southern
Pacific draftsman, documents its use back to the days of the early sailing vessels, when sailors customarily set
up a fireplace or stove on ships' decks. To protect their fires and provide shelter for themselves, seamen erected
boxes over their fireplaces. These shelters were known to the Dutch as kabuis, to the Danes as kabys, the Swedes as
kabysa, and Germans as kabuse.
Another theory holds that the word originated in Texas, Americanized from the Spanish word calabozo, meaning
jailhouse. This idea, too, seems to have some merit. In the eastern portion of the U.S., the car at the end of the
train was called a "way car," "cabin car," "conductor's van," "accommodation car," "train car," "brakeman's cab,"
"shanty," or "crummy." Many eastern railroads called them way cars, with a few referring to them as accommodation cars.
Only in the West has the crew car been known almost universally as the caboose.
Cupolas were first built into cabooses on the Central Pacific, Southern Pacific’s railroad ancestor, about 1875, and
were permanent fixtures until 1949, when bay windows first made their appearance on SP cabooses.
In the early days of railroading, each crew was assigned its own caboose, which served as home for days at a time.
Some crews gave their rolling homes as much care as their wives gave to their permanent family residences, equipping
them with such niceties as lace curtains, picturesque lithographs, their own mattresses and bed linen, easy chairs,
even cook stoves. The culinary arts of some crews became legendary, with specialties ranging from hot cakes so light
they had to be weighted down, to holiday feasts of roast turkey and trimmings. As railroading grew more complex, and
trains grew faster and went farther in shorter times, the caboose was no longer necessary to provide a home for
extended periods. They were then assigned to the divisions, and crews rarely left their own districts. In the 1950s,
cabooses became obsolete.
Information courtesy of Al Frank, long-time Forney Museum volunteer and consultant for volunteer projects.
