History of Railroad Cabooses
by David Barth, October 1, 2008. The information was taken from an article written by conductor W. J. Wash in a
Southern Pacific (SP) Bulletin dated January, 1962, pages 22-26.
Conductor W. J. Wash was master of his caboose in the days when conductors had their own cabooses and the car
served as his "home" for days at a time.
ORIGIN OF THE CABOOSE
The little wood shanty that used to trail faithfully after every string of freight cars has undergone many changes
since the 1800's.
The origin of the caboose is un-certain. Even its birthdate is unknown. 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 on a box or barrel in the last car of a freight train and direct the train's operation.
PLATFORM CARS AND BOX CARS
As trains and runs grew longer, some railroads provided platform cars for their train crews. In the mid-1800's, train
crews built box-like shelters on a platform car to shield their cooking fires. Eventually, around the turn of the 20th
century, box cars were used by crews to use as shelters.
CUPOLAS
Cupola-topped wooden cabooses became popular after World War I. They had wooden benches, a coal bin to hold fuel
for a heater, feather dusters to brush the coal dust from the seats, kerosene lamps, and a "lazy board," a wooden plank
used by crew members to rest on long trips.
SPECIALLY-BUILT CABOOSES
In the middle of the 20th century, cabooses were specially-built with bay windows of shatterproof glass, an automatic
oil heater, electric lights, a refrigerator, a drinking fountain, and a radio-telephone to communicate with the engineers.
Cabooses had specially-designed Pullman-type crew seats instead of the earlier, wooden seats. A comfortable cot replaced
the lazy board for a crew member to rest. The caboose became a rolling office, efficient and functional, vastly
different from its forebears.
TWO THEORIES
Even the origin of the word caboose is disputed. Railroad historical authority, D. L. Joslyn, a retired SP
draftsman, documents its use back to the days of the early sailing vessels, when sailors customarily set up a fireplace
or stove on ship's 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 was the crew car known almost universally as the "caboose."
CUPOLAS
The origin of the most distinguishing feature of cabooses, the "lookout" or cupola, has also been the subject of
controversy, although a Chicago & North Western (C&NW) freight conductor seems to have settled the question.
In 1898, T. B. Watson wrote, "During the 1860's I was a conductor on the C&NW. One day, late in the summer of 1863,
I received orders to give my caboose to the conductor of a construction train and take an empty boxcar to use as a
caboose. This car happened to have a hole in the roof about two feet square. I stacked the lamp and tool boxes under
the perforation end and sat with my head and shoulders above the roof. Later, I suggested putting a box around
the hole with windows, so I could have a pilot house to sit in and watch the train."
Cupolas were first built into cabooses on the Central Pacific (SP's railroad ancestor) about 1875, and were permanent
fixtures until 1949, when bay windows first made their appearance on SP cabooses. The Akron, Canton & Youngstown
Railroad is said to have been the first railroad to use the bay window, in 1923.
CABOOSE WAS HOME
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.
POOLS
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. Cabooses were pooled which proved a very practical and economical decision.
Pools were established in SP's northern and southern districts. The Roseville-Northeast pool, with 140 cabooses, covered
the territory from Roseville to Brooklyn and Eugene on the North, and to Ogden in the east.
The Los Angeles-Southwest pool had 228 bay-window cabooses in use between Roseville, San Francisco, Bakersfield, and
Los Angeles, California; El Paso, Texas; and Tucumcari, New Mexico. Under the pool arrangement, a caboose stayed with
the freight train from the train's point of origin until it reached its destination or an interchange
point with another railroad.
DESIGNED WITH CARE
During the 1950's, SP built 200 all-steel cars with bay windows, designed by SP Mechanical Department engineers,
with the cooperation of the Operating and Safety Departments. A far cry from the ill-equipped caboose of
old, these modern cars cost nearly $18,000 each to build, in 1955 dollars. Typical of the efforts made to modernize
crew cars was the re-building of caboose SP-1000 in 1959. One of the cabooses constructed in 1937, SP-1000 received
complete remodeling in the Los Angeles General Shops and was equipped with the most up-to-date
appliances.
TESTING THE UPDATED CABOOSE
The updated car was used by crews
between Los Angeles and El Paso, with the request that they evaluate the new equipment, and suggest further improvements.
After the test runs, the car was taken to San Francisco, where it was inspected at the company's invitation by
legislative representatives and general chairmen of the Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen and the Brotherhood
of Railway Trainmen, as well as by four staff members of the California Public Utilities Commission.
One of the most
important advances made in modernizing cabooses, said Mechanical Department Engineer, L. F. Bardoff, who helped design
the new crew cars, "is the electrification program we began in 1954. We are continuing to install electrical systems
so that eventually all cabooses used in pool service and long local runs will have electric marker lights, as well as
desk and other interior lights. The electric refrigerators will be a help, too, in which to keep lunches and cold drinks
on the hot runs." M. A. Nugent, superintendent of safety, added that the consideration given to the comfort, health and
safety of crews is another important factor in our cabooses. "The heavier drawbars and center sills," he says,
"coupled with all-steel superstructure, window safety glass and nonskid floor paint have made our cabooses some of the
finest-and safest-crew equipment on any railroad."
THE DEATH OF THE CABOOSE
A few years later, the railroads successfully petitioned to have cabooses deemed obsolete using the argument that the
technology of communications, railroad control centers, and sensors made them unnecessary. The railroad unions
lost the fight to retain the caboose, after their use for more than a century. By the 1970's thousands of
cabooses were scrapped. A few have survived to adorn parks and museums across the U.S.