Thanks for watching the video! I hope you enjoyed it! The title and thumbnail style is based on a gaming history channel I like called "Ahoy" ( th-cam.com/users/XboxAhoy ) so check him out if you're interested! Also, this is the first part of a new commentary mini-series that will delve into the origins and evolution of certain railroad cars in the US. The next one I have planned is about reefer cars so I hope you look forward to that too, and let me know what you thought of this video!
Australia still somewhat use cabooses but we call them living cars only found on fright trains going long trips across Australia they not use to watch the train but hold the second crew there it’s like a hotel room but better
it makes me happy that so many cabooses are in preservation. It seems almost every town with a railroad has at least one caboose somewhere along side the tracks it may have once traveled on.
Not so much my town, but a neighboring town actually has an EX-IC caboose, since it's next to former illinois central track, Thought id just share that cool bit of info.
that just makes me miss the days of the caboose even more. I remember watching the Conrail GP-38's pulling long freight trains down the line, and we always waited till the end. Guy with a coffee cup in one hand, cigar in the other and waving to all us kids as they rolled threw town.
Whenever I worked as caboose host (basically someone to supervise the people who rent out the caboose for a unique excursion experience) at the New Hope Railroad I always tell them that they got the best seat in the house and trust me they do. There was always someone in the cupola, the seats on the south end are like 2 couches, and we plan to get some of accommodations in service on our only operational caboose (A B&M one from 1927) such as a fridge, sink, and a functional toilet. The caboose really is one of the biggest icons of railroad history whether you had an interest in trains or not so its no wonder we quite often get caboose tickets on the busier trains.
5:37 Seeing the pinup girls decorating the interior made me chuckle! Very old timely! This is a great history of the caboose and as I usually do with these videos, I've learned something here. I once saw a caboose at the end of a Canadian Pacific train back in 2016 I think. I honestly couldn't believe it but there it was at the end of the freight train streaked with rust!
To me, as a Limey, the caboose is as iconic of American railroading as a pilot, bell, oil headlight and balloon stack. Freight trains just don't look right without one, either here or 'over there'. Although we didn't use the term 'caboose' for the vehicle, according to historian G R Weddell the term was used on the London & South Western Railway for the raised 'birdcage' (other companies preferred term) with deep lookout windows at the end of their four and six wheeled passenger brake vans. This shouldn't perhaps be surprising given that the LSWR served Southampton, and particularly in early days recruited a lot of sailors as brakesmen. I'd often wondered why the spelling 'break' was often used on English railways rather than 'brake', which was after all what it there for. Your explanation is a good one. Going back in time to the 1950s, the old US model firm of Red Ball (was it Howell Day?) offered a model of a pioneer L&N caboose, which was a box car with a garden seat on the roof! Thanks too for the film, both still and moving of early US trains; several of my favourites in there.
Where I work our work train (for track maintenance - hauling ties, rail, etc) we have a BN caboose at the end of the train, ironically with a ETD coupled to the back of the caboose as well. When I was a conductor trainee during the summer of 2022, I was able to have the experience to ride in one of these with the brakemen. It was neat to have the experience of looking through the cupola in addition to cooking hamburgers on the stove for lunch. I'm fortunate to be able to have this experience knowing that the caboose could be eliminated off the work train tomorrow. People will always ask when they see a caboose still active on the rails and say "I haven't seen one of those in years!" and I'm glad they get to see it too. Fun fact: Our railroad actually calls it the "tool car" although we all know it as a caboose.
@4:56 that image of the NYC Bay Window Caboose and the guy in the window so happens to be my great grandfather! He was a brakemen/fireman on the NYCS and would always ride in the cabooses! He’s the reason my family owns a NYC bay Window caboose today! Great video!
I rode caboose as a rear brakeman & conductor for the MKT from 1976 to 1988. The part about the slack action is very true. Alot depended on the consist of loads vs empties and how they were placed in a mixed freight , how long the train was and the amount of hogback territory (rolling terrain) along the way..A great deal of the credit to controlling slack action went to a really good engineer. I rapidly became familiar with those hog head's that gave consistently smooth rides as opposed to those that made you wish you had a hockey player's suit on. All in all it was a great experience. Today retired MKT cab 140 is on display at the Temple Heritage & RR museum in Temple TX. One that I rode many times back in the day.
in the 70-80's I worked as a carman in the departure yard. In the winter, there was nothing better after you inspected the cars, closed journals, and laced the hoses to spend time in the Cupola waiting for the air pressure to equalize. Those stoves put out some awesome heat. Thanks for the memories.
For my wedding, I chartered a caboose on the White Pass & Yukon Route behind a Fraser Turn train. Had the crew stop on the way back to Skagway and we did the short ceremony right on the tracks at Inspiration Point. My 20th Anniversary will be in a few months, but alas, the caboose we chartered has been permanently laid up behind the rotary at the depot...No chance for a repeat. :-( The caboose was also done in by the fact the modern device also known as an "SBU" by Canadian Pacific for the Sense and Brake Unit capabilities. I repaired them for about six months, and found they had a fair number of things aboard that would replace stuff in the caboose, such as: 1) Brake Pressure Valve. The engineer and conductor at the front of the train could monitor the brake pipe pressure at the back end of the train. Handy to know if you've got bottled air. 2) Ability to put the train into emergency from the back end of the train. Again, handy if you really need the train to stop in a hurry. Especially if they're 10,000ft long monsters like we see today. 3) Ability to know if the back end of the train is moving. These things have ability to detect if they're being shaken (aka, moving) and advise the head end accordingly. 4) Some units are equipped with service brake valves. These can initiate brake pipe reductions instead of brake pipe evacuations (like you'd find under emergency braking) to help a train slow down, but not stop. 5) They've also got some other electronic telemetry type stuff going on as well, like GPS receivers and can provide more data to the people at the office about the performance of the train. And like you eluded, they also satisfy the "markers" requirement for definition of a train, by having a red reflectorized plate or bright red light to indicate the end of the train. So in addition to the capabilities above along with the wayside talking hot box detectors that can radio the report of the train, the people needing to be at the back end of the train could now be eliminated and/or brought to the front end of the train. I still like the fact they're being used as shoving platforms though...
Something of note for those wondering about how British "Brake vans" differ from a caboose, haven ridden in my fair share in preservation. typically they're of just two axles, like a bobber caboose, with the earliest examples sharing a 10ft wheelbase with standard goods stock at the time, but this was increased to 12ft to allow for greater stability at speed. the Southern Railway and LMS both trialed "Bogie" brake vans, with the former known as "queen mary" brakes, but overall these weren't a huge success crew accommodations consist of padded seats positioned to let the crews look out the "duckets" (side look outs), a coal or wood fired stove with a hot plate to keep a tea thermos warm off to one side) and a desk up against one end. no provision for a toilet was provided as the journeys were a lot shorter, and being a goods train the guard would have plenty of opportunities to releive themselves if the train was shoved into a passing loop to let a passenger train pass. one area where the operations differed was breaking, here in the UK we used a single three link chain with sprung buffers and a sprung hook to absorb any jarring, but this gave up to a foot per coupling of slack (and when trains could be as long at 70 wagons it's easy to do the math) and the guard had to be skilled enough to control this to prevent both couplings braking when the chains "snatched" and the train surging forward on downhill gradients. It's even been said that in the heyday of loose coupled goods trains the guards could be skilled enough with the brake to maintain uniform tension even if the train was snaking it's way over multiple grades at once.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 not true, the Southern Railway had the "Queen Mary" brake van for express goods, whilst the LMS had three 40t brakevans used on a route from Copley Hill to Armley, a short route but one with substantial gradients
@@NovaCoronaSolarisBlastlike you know anything. The GNR had 4-axle 20Ton brake vans one of which was preserved on the NYMR during the 1970s. These axles were not on bogies.
We Indians still stick cabooses (here they are called brake vans) at the ends of trains and it's still a pretty common site to see a guard in a brake van holding a green flag or waving at onlookers. And yes, we have TONS of brake vans converted from BCNA boxcars!
Growing up in Michigan along a Chessie line outside Detroit in the 1970s and 80s, I loved seeing the caboose and the crew waving. For a time, I actually kinda thought the crews job was to wave at kids. In 1984, while on Christmas vacation in Florida at my grandmother's I remember seeing a newscast on television about the removal of the caboose. It happened really fast. Within a year, all the cabeese (plural) had been removed from our local freight trains. Nice video. Thanks for sharing.
There’s a man in New Gloucester, Maine who has a rescued caboose and now has it sat out in his front yard. You see it everytime you pass by. It’s great 👍🏻
Thanks for posting this. When I was going to college I was able to get a summer job at Pacific Car & Foundry in Renton, WA working on the assembly line. One of the orders I worked on was what I believe was among the last orders of cabooses ever ordered by Burlington Northern. This was in 1975. At my workstation we were installing parts of the interior, including handholds, the overhead handrail, an oil tank, etc. Of course, I had no idea that cabooses were about to disappear.
In the summer of 2021, I actually stayed in a Caboose hostel for a few days! The Squilax General Store in Squilax, BC has 3 cabooses, each of which have been lightly modified (with more-standard beds, electricity, and plumbing) to sleep 6 people. Had a great time reading and listening to freight train radio chatter up in the cupola
Very good overview on the subject. One particular thing about cabooses, it's true that most cabooses, regardless of the railroad, were painted in some shade of red, but there were exceptions, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, where cabooses were painted in the standard colors of the railroad. The Chessie System, the Family Lines System and the Seaboard Coast Line, Penn Central, Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, and Conrail all painted their cabooses in their respective colors.
While its sad that I've never seen a caboose in action on the end of a freight train, I'm happy to know that I live near a small freight depot filled with them. Caboose Village, Northfield - New Hampshire
They're making a come back!! Seen more now as shoving platforms. I never saw any growing unless as a display but now as an adult I've seen a few on some trains. Great video
@@CANControlGRAFFITI They are rarely in use, I remember seeing a video in the US where a Heritage Railway was doing a Nuclear Flask Contract from a Decomssioned Nuclear Power Station and so the Cabosse and another Heritage Coach. I don't remember the video name, but I found it interesting. It was same here in the UK where Break Van's were placed on Hazardous Good Trains.
@@CANControlGRAFFITI There actually has been talk for a while now about possibly bringing them back on some limited runs of the modern "super long" freight trains. Since they're making trains longer and longer, it's no longer feasible for the crews to walk the entire train to look for problems, then walk all the way back to the front for tools and parts, then all the way back to the back. So they're talking about experimenting with putting some cabooses back on to help alleviate this. But so-far it's only been talk, at least in my area. Pretty stupidly only talk if you ask me.
Great video as always brother! To me there has always been a certain romance to the caboose. I had also wondered what happened to them; thanks for giving me some closure lol. Can’t wait to see what you put out next!
In Europe the caboose in freight trains was often seen placed direct after the locomotive. Some German steamengines had even a guard house in the tender of the locomotive. The caboose was used voor passenger lugage ,mail and handling freightdocuments. Freighttrains had often a smal caboose just for housing the guard and handling freightdocuments) The conductor (head guard) is the actual chief of the train so he had to look and confirm the signals along the line and could intervene with his own brakinglever. Lots of old goods vans were converted in to a caboose for freightrains due to the high demand. passenger trains had full lugage or combined passenger-lugage cars with a cupola or sponsons added to it. There were even cabooses with only for women and toilet compartments for passenger trains. The caboose has also disapeard from european railroads due to modern enginering. But a guardhouse can still often be seen on modern multiple unit passenger trains. The only thing that comes close to a caboose is the modern command vehicle on a railtrack worktrain.
In the UK in the pre-grouping era we also had brake vans with the look outmposition above the vehicle roof just like the cupola but we called them Bird Cages.
Hello from Australia Here we sometimes call EOTs "BOGs" Battery Operated Guard some run on 6V dry cells others use trainline power they range from $200 - $8500 AU depending on what you run on a train
A great place to stay is at the The Red Caboose in Strasburg, PA where they have about maybe 50 cabooses there converted into motel rooms. My family used to stay there all the time as a kid and now i go bacck there as an adult. They've also got a dinning car converted into a restaurant, a petting zoo, and also a great place to get Amish buggy rides.
Nice vid, the icon for it reminded me abit of Ahoy's vids and I was almost expecting to hear the music he uses for his Iconic arms series. x3 I hope to see more of this kind of vid for other rolling stock. :3 Also thought of something for it. The caboose. Power breaker. Last in line. Life saver.
In the continental Europe cabooses weren't as widespread as in the US. Not at least on long-distance freights, but these were common on local routes, where a freight train would collect or drop off one or two car from each station's team track on their way to a larger yard. The continental European caboose was usually an adapted two-axle freight car, either right from the factory or converted in a workshop later on. The only European country that had purpose-built cabooses I know of is Czechoslovakia - little, short, green, wooden two-axle cars with bayside windows and a observation platform at one end. The reason why it was used on local freights was the steam power used on them - the conductor and switchman could not perform their duties when staying inside already bustling cab of a locomotive. It wasn't also uncommon for locals to catch a ride on one of them in exchange for a bottle of moonshine or other "price", when there was no regular passenger train at given time and barely anyone had a car. Many of these cars were retired from service by mid-eighties or early nineties when steam locomotives were finally phased out in the last countries that used them, with Czech and Slovakian cabooses being used well into 21st century! Oh, and the US Transportation Corps stationed in West Germany from 1945 to 1989 had their own tailor-made cabooses, which were two-axle ones of "cupola" design - maybe so the crews could feel like at home :) Here are some photos of East European cabooses I found in a short while: wgk.cal.pl/data/media/181/30_54_9405_212-2_Da-k_CZ-CDC_st._Caslav_PP_Kolin_PJ_Nymburk_SOKV_Usti_nad_Labem.jpg wgk.cal.pl/data/media/911/DSC05262.jpg wgk.cal.pl/data/media/888/23K-brankard-milk.jpg
Also fun fact about FREDs: Their telemetry radios operate on the UHF band and the EOTs transmit at 2 watts. The FOT transmits to the EOT @ 452.937.5 MHz and The EOT transmits to the FOT @ 457.937.5 MHz You can program these into your scanners to loosely figure out if a train is near you. This method won't work in high rail traffic areas as you'll hear a transmission every few seconds...
If I had to choose what kind of caboose is my favourite it’s the bobber caboose, theres something I just love about thinking of a massive freight train and seeing this tiny caboose at the end as it rolls pass.
We have a re-serviced , I believe it's an Erie-Lackawanna, Caboose being used as an ice cream shop, in the Town of West Seneca, NY., a suburb of Buffalo (WNY). They did a beautiful job repainting and landscaping the area surrounding it. By the way, they're pretty busy.
I remember the caboose on the Rutland Rail Road freight trains in the 60s. Two trains a day from Rutland VT to Bennington VT and back. About 60 miles each way.
Nice video. I have been on the caboose at 3:17 (LIRR 14) while visiting the Greenport Railroad Museum, which also has a great view of the present day Greenport Station. I tried to place a camera in the cupola with a westbound leaving the station, but the caboose was locked and I had to railfan just outside of the museum instead. But regardless, great job on this video. I had no idea that the infamous BQ23-7 was an attempt to replace the caboose.
You can still see Cabooses in daily service on the Union Railroad in Duquesne PA serving the U.S. Steel Mon valley works. They have about 22 miles of signaled mainline although track speed is only about 15mph
If I were in charge of UP or BNSF, my first order of business would be to bring cabooses back and look into modern steam technology. Trains just look incomplete without a caboose! My model freight trains will always have a caboose!
Same, but I think all the major railroads oughta give steam another look; seeing promise in the 5AT Advanced Steam project fall through thus far (shame BR never took that idea seriously) and other developments like biofuel being tested with a heritage line or two (the one I recall also modifying an ATSF 2-10-2 to run on a puck-like biofuel that's like coal with less emissions AND much more renewable) on top of tech being compressed size-wise at large, we could be having a renaissance for steam on US metals (not just for heritage lines) and MAN it'd just be great to see us catch up to the UK and Japan for quality & number/% of steam engines preserved (ours being pretty abysmal since we went hard on dieselization). Growing up with Thomas and seeing how developed & great the UK scene for heritage lines alone has left me feeling so cheated, being we don't have many in New England AND my hometown used to be a railroad town with a line RIGHT NEXT TO MY STREET SOME 40 FEET APART.
@@jaredhebert942 there’s also the ACE steam locomotive concept (which looks so much like a Diesel engine it’s not even funny) which uses (in theory) computer control to control the fire (the oxygen allowed to it and the fuel allowed to it) essentially our version of the SR leader class had it ever been built
I read stories that the caboose was were the party was at. Crews would smoke pot in the caboose. When they were done, they’d toss joints out the window. This would cause “grass” to grow by the side of the tracks!
I've visited antebellum, Civil War and Golden Spike era model RRs seeing "old timer" bobber cabooses and other such caboose...I said nothing but thought...nahhh. not yet. See it in movies and paintings too. Shortie coaches, combines and box cars are the most historic representation for end of train in the Great Locomotive Chase era.
0:18 in fact, the French right spelling is cambuse.As for the "brake van" ( 1:12 ), it is mainly because it had changed from a simple surveillance van to an effective break assiistance one, providing breaking power to the goods trains, the majority of goods wagons of the time not being equipped with individual brakes, even after the continuous Westinghouse air brake was introduced for passenger rolling stock.
I think my only comment would be that it might have been good to get into why the office was needed. There's plenty of paper work to do and the why might have been good to cover. Otherwise it's really great and concise.
Another name for the FRED is the F---ing rear end device, at first I had taken it as a joke but while I was at a trade college training for railroad operations we actually had to carry one 1.5 miles and back again as if we had just finished hooking up a large consist and needed to add one to the end, long story short there is 100% no way to carry a FRED comfortably, it is extremely awkward to carry and it is unbalanced as if on purpose, the carry handle is near the base of the device near the hose connector meaning that the super thick and heavy hose is pulling one end down while the near weightless top half with the flashing light just wants to go straight up, even trying to carry one on your shoulder was hard, the hose would always swing and hit you with the metal connector, the super light metal box was huge and wouldn't rest on your shoulder nicely. They work great for what they do but god they are completely obnoxious to handle.
My great great uncle was a brake man he was killed doing his job in 1946 in upstate ny. He survived the battle of monte casino came back then promptly died falling off the top of a box car
Can't say I pay all that much attention to trains these days. A little since they are nifty tech, but nothing like when I was a kid (I think many can sympathize with me here). Working trains are pretty uncommon here. Hell the city only got its rail track back in working order a few years ago and now some tourist trains come up once in a while and there are a handful of freight trains that come up. But since the tracks end halfway through town, there is little reason for any other trains to come up. But the traditional caboose for whatever reason always stayed special for me. IDK why, I just think they are neat. edit: grammar
Parts of one are preserved in my shed. My grandpa took it on himself to "preserve" one. Now it's parts are a liquor cabinet. And people wonder why the SP had problems if everyone stole from them.
The FEC was also the first railroad to abolish their use of cabeese, and on the note of converting cars into cabeese, they also replaced a number of ventilated 40 foot boxcarsninto bay window cabeese, so that’s neat
In Lancaster, PA, there's a hotel that offers the chance to sleep in a caboose! There are various kinds and in various roadnames. It's very cool. Hey AmtrakGuy365, great video!
Thing is, theres this tiny little shunting yard for one of the grain depots (for some reason in the middle of town) that has a small shunting loco and its respective although very rusty caboose which i find interesting that UP still uses it probably bc they cant procure a EOT or FRED.
Hi great video. I still see cabooses at the end of freight trains just at the state borders for long hauls. Other places they use a caboose once in a blue moon not too often. The deliveries they make are local runs. That's probably why you don't see cabooses that much anymore blah.😂
Railroad press once stated."The little cars were expensive to maintain and produced no revenue."... I believe the safety issue to the general public is price we pay ,however.
Cheektowaga NY, we have a caboose that’s being used as an ice cream parlor lol. It’s super cute. As well as a few more scattered around town as either part of rail museums or monuments
the term caboose and break van are the same thing to most people but for me when i think break van i think a small grey/white/black van with to outside areas for viewing and a comfy inside with seats and a lever for braking but when i think a long rectangle usually red/yellow (very rarely green or blue) that’s basically just another coach not that i think of it i’ve never heard a caboose being used for braking usually because modern diesel trains are pretty god damn strong so yea that’s basically the difference i see between them
Thanks for watching the video! I hope you enjoyed it! The title and thumbnail style is based on a gaming history channel I like called "Ahoy" ( th-cam.com/users/XboxAhoy ) so check him out if you're interested! Also, this is the first part of a new commentary mini-series that will delve into the origins and evolution of certain railroad cars in the US. The next one I have planned is about reefer cars so I hope you look forward to that too, and let me know what you thought of this video!
Already subbed to Ahoy, recognized the homage to his Iconic Arms series instantly. Looks fantastic!
I love ahoy! You took AG365
Also the Cabooses can be found in service at Heritage Railroads giving rides to the public or used for photo freight runs.
When is the mohawk locomotive coming to engines of New York Central
Australia still somewhat use cabooses but we call them living cars only found on fright trains going long trips across Australia they not use to watch the train but hold the second crew there it’s like a hotel room but better
wow. never knew! also i just noticed that there is just V E R Y slow mario music
Sush or nintendo Will Sue him ;)
@@korealaaya1826 no they won’t
There’s also clips from the 1927 movie the general
@@Brooklyn_T_Guy it's a joke
@@korealaaya1826 oh sorry my bad
it makes me happy that so many cabooses are in preservation. It seems almost every town with a railroad has at least one caboose somewhere along side the tracks it may have once traveled on.
Not so much my town, but a neighboring town actually has an EX-IC caboose, since it's next to former illinois central track, Thought id just share that cool bit of info.
I actually live near a train museum and actually visit it quite often, it actually has 3 or so cabooses (one being narrow gauge)
that just makes me miss the days of the caboose even more. I remember watching the Conrail GP-38's pulling long freight trains down the line, and we always waited till the end. Guy with a coffee cup in one hand, cigar in the other and waving to all us kids as they rolled threw town.
닭ㅉㅉㅈㄸㄸ기자 ㄸㄷ
You said it - technology isn't everything. It was all about the management making more money for themselves.
@@brandtbecker1810 Yeah, who needs safety, reliability and punctuality anyway?
Whenever I worked as caboose host (basically someone to supervise the people who rent out the caboose for a unique excursion experience) at the New Hope Railroad I always tell them that they got the best seat in the house and trust me they do. There was always someone in the cupola, the seats on the south end are like 2 couches, and we plan to get some of accommodations in service on our only operational caboose (A B&M one from 1927) such as a fridge, sink, and a functional toilet. The caboose really is one of the biggest icons of railroad history whether you had an interest in trains or not so its no wonder we quite often get caboose tickets on the busier trains.
Like your vids
5:37 Seeing the pinup girls decorating the interior made me chuckle! Very old timely! This is a great history of the caboose and as I usually do with these videos, I've learned something here. I once saw a caboose at the end of a Canadian Pacific train back in 2016 I think. I honestly couldn't believe it but there it was at the end of the freight train streaked with rust!
That’s actually where the name came from, the photos/drawing would be “pinned up” to the walls.
And then followed up by Mai, which is kind of odd to see a fellow railfan weeb. Lol
To me, as a Limey, the caboose is as iconic of American railroading as a pilot, bell, oil headlight and balloon stack. Freight trains just don't look right without one, either here or 'over there'. Although we didn't use the term 'caboose' for the vehicle, according to historian G R Weddell the term was used on the London & South Western Railway for the raised 'birdcage' (other companies preferred term) with deep lookout windows at the end of their four and six wheeled passenger brake vans. This shouldn't perhaps be surprising given that the LSWR served Southampton, and particularly in early days recruited a lot of sailors as brakesmen.
I'd often wondered why the spelling 'break' was often used on English railways rather than 'brake', which was after all what it there for. Your explanation is a good one. Going back in time to the 1950s, the old US model firm of Red Ball (was it Howell Day?) offered a model of a pioneer L&N caboose, which was a box car with a garden seat on the roof!
Thanks too for the film, both still and moving of early US trains; several of my favourites in there.
Where I work our work train (for track maintenance - hauling ties, rail, etc) we have a BN caboose at the end of the train, ironically with a ETD coupled to the back of the caboose as well. When I was a conductor trainee during the summer of 2022, I was able to have the experience to ride in one of these with the brakemen. It was neat to have the experience of looking through the cupola in addition to cooking hamburgers on the stove for lunch.
I'm fortunate to be able to have this experience knowing that the caboose could be eliminated off the work train tomorrow. People will always ask when they see a caboose still active on the rails and say "I haven't seen one of those in years!" and I'm glad they get to see it too. Fun fact: Our railroad actually calls it the "tool car" although we all know it as a caboose.
@4:56 that image of the NYC Bay Window Caboose and the guy in the window so happens to be my great grandfather! He was a brakemen/fireman on the NYCS and would always ride in the cabooses! He’s the reason my family owns a NYC bay Window caboose today! Great video!
Wow that’s really cool!
Now that is an amazing fact!
I rode caboose as a rear brakeman & conductor for the MKT from 1976 to 1988. The part about the slack action is very true. Alot depended on the consist of loads vs empties and how they were placed in a mixed freight , how long the train was and the amount of hogback territory (rolling terrain) along the way..A great deal of the credit to controlling slack action went to a really good engineer. I rapidly became familiar with those hog head's that gave consistently smooth rides as opposed to those that made you wish you had a hockey player's suit on. All in all it was a great experience. Today retired MKT cab 140 is on display at the Temple Heritage & RR museum in Temple TX. One that I rode many times back in the day.
in the 70-80's I worked as a carman in the departure yard. In the winter, there was nothing better after you inspected the cars, closed journals, and laced the hoses to spend time in the Cupola waiting for the air pressure to equalize. Those stoves put out some awesome heat.
Thanks for the memories.
They are pretty amazing rolling stock for railroads. I have saw a lot of these Cabooses.
For my wedding, I chartered a caboose on the White Pass & Yukon Route behind a Fraser Turn train. Had the crew stop on the way back to Skagway and we did the short ceremony right on the tracks at Inspiration Point. My 20th Anniversary will be in a few months, but alas, the caboose we chartered has been permanently laid up behind the rotary at the depot...No chance for a repeat. :-(
The caboose was also done in by the fact the modern device also known as an "SBU" by Canadian Pacific for the Sense and Brake Unit capabilities. I repaired them for about six months, and found they had a fair number of things aboard that would replace stuff in the caboose, such as:
1) Brake Pressure Valve. The engineer and conductor at the front of the train could monitor the brake pipe pressure at the back end of the train. Handy to know if you've got bottled air.
2) Ability to put the train into emergency from the back end of the train. Again, handy if you really need the train to stop in a hurry. Especially if they're 10,000ft long monsters like we see today.
3) Ability to know if the back end of the train is moving. These things have ability to detect if they're being shaken (aka, moving) and advise the head end accordingly.
4) Some units are equipped with service brake valves. These can initiate brake pipe reductions instead of brake pipe evacuations (like you'd find under emergency braking) to help a train slow down, but not stop.
5) They've also got some other electronic telemetry type stuff going on as well, like GPS receivers and can provide more data to the people at the office about the performance of the train.
And like you eluded, they also satisfy the "markers" requirement for definition of a train, by having a red reflectorized plate or bright red light to indicate the end of the train. So in addition to the capabilities above along with the wayside talking hot box detectors that can radio the report of the train, the people needing to be at the back end of the train could now be eliminated and/or brought to the front end of the train.
I still like the fact they're being used as shoving platforms though...
Something of note for those wondering about how British "Brake vans" differ from a caboose, haven ridden in my fair share in preservation.
typically they're of just two axles, like a bobber caboose, with the earliest examples sharing a 10ft wheelbase with standard goods stock at the time, but this was increased to 12ft to allow for greater stability at speed. the Southern Railway and LMS both trialed "Bogie" brake vans, with the former known as "queen mary" brakes, but overall these weren't a huge success
crew accommodations consist of padded seats positioned to let the crews look out the "duckets" (side look outs), a coal or wood fired stove with a hot plate to keep a tea thermos warm off to one side) and a desk up against one end. no provision for a toilet was provided as the journeys were a lot shorter, and being a goods train the guard would have plenty of opportunities to releive themselves if the train was shoved into a passing loop to let a passenger train pass.
one area where the operations differed was breaking, here in the UK we used a single three link chain with sprung buffers and a sprung hook to absorb any jarring, but this gave up to a foot per coupling of slack (and when trains could be as long at 70 wagons it's easy to do the math) and the guard had to be skilled enough to control this to prevent both couplings braking when the chains "snatched" and the train surging forward on downhill gradients. It's even been said that in the heyday of loose coupled goods trains the guards could be skilled enough with the brake to maintain uniform tension even if the train was snaking it's way over multiple grades at once.
Its sad they're all gone from the main network now. Loved the Queen Mary's.
There were some 6 and 8 wheelers as well but all with fixed frames and not bogies.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 not true, the Southern Railway had the "Queen Mary" brake van for express goods, whilst the LMS had three 40t brakevans used on a route from Copley Hill to Armley, a short route but one with substantial gradients
@@NovaCoronaSolarisBlastlike you know anything. The GNR had 4-axle 20Ton brake vans one of which was preserved on the NYMR during the 1970s. These axles were not on bogies.
We Indians still stick cabooses (here they are called brake vans) at the ends of trains and it's still a pretty common site to see a guard in a brake van holding a green flag or waving at onlookers. And yes, we have TONS of brake vans converted from BCNA boxcars!
The Railroad caboose will always be remembered for railroad transportation
Miss them, seeing life at the end of a train made train watching more interesting.
Growing up in Michigan along a Chessie line outside Detroit in the 1970s and 80s, I loved seeing the caboose and the crew waving. For a time, I actually kinda thought the crews job was to wave at kids.
In 1984, while on Christmas vacation in Florida at my grandmother's I remember seeing a newscast on television about the removal of the caboose. It happened really fast. Within a year, all the cabeese (plural) had been removed from our local freight trains.
Nice video. Thanks for sharing.
I'll never forget waiting at a crossing with dad when I was a kid and in his heavy Italian accent he said " Mauro! Lookit da caboose"
Now I enjoy watching the head end and DPUs👍🇨🇦
Always loved the look of that classic red one!
There’s a man in New Gloucester, Maine who has a rescued caboose and now has it sat out in his front yard. You see it everytime you pass by. It’s great 👍🏻
Thanks for posting this. When I was going to college I was able to get a summer job at Pacific Car & Foundry in Renton, WA working on the assembly line. One of the orders I worked on was what I believe was among the last orders of cabooses ever ordered by Burlington Northern. This was in 1975. At my workstation we were installing parts of the interior, including handholds, the overhead handrail, an oil tank, etc. Of course, I had no idea that cabooses were about to disappear.
In the summer of 2021, I actually stayed in a Caboose hostel for a few days! The Squilax General Store in Squilax, BC has 3 cabooses, each of which have been lightly modified (with more-standard beds, electricity, and plumbing) to sleep 6 people. Had a great time reading and listening to freight train radio chatter up in the cupola
Very good overview on the subject. One particular thing about cabooses, it's true that most cabooses, regardless of the railroad, were painted in some shade of red, but there were exceptions, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, where cabooses were painted in the standard colors of the railroad. The Chessie System, the Family Lines System and the Seaboard Coast Line, Penn Central, Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, and Conrail all painted their cabooses in their respective colors.
While its sad that I've never seen a caboose in action on the end of a freight train, I'm happy to know that I live near a small freight depot filled with them. Caboose Village, Northfield - New Hampshire
love these historical vids. i have 0 interest in trains, but your videos always somehow make me interested. love em' keep it coming.
The style has also been adopted into tiny houses, however most of them aren’t real cabooses but just trailers
They're making a come back!! Seen more now as shoving platforms. I never saw any growing unless as a display but now as an adult I've seen a few on some trains. Great video
In Australia you don't find brakevans anymore unless they're either in museums, on preserved railways or in scrapyards
They definitely aren’t making a come back. Most have been taken off the rails or scrapped
@@CANControlGRAFFITI They are rarely in use, I remember seeing a video in the US where a Heritage Railway was doing a Nuclear Flask Contract from a Decomssioned Nuclear Power Station and so the Cabosse and another Heritage Coach. I don't remember the video name, but I found it interesting. It was same here in the UK where Break Van's were placed on Hazardous Good Trains.
@@CANControlGRAFFITI There actually has been talk for a while now about possibly bringing them back on some limited runs of the modern "super long" freight trains. Since they're making trains longer and longer, it's no longer feasible for the crews to walk the entire train to look for problems, then walk all the way back to the front for tools and parts, then all the way back to the back. So they're talking about experimenting with putting some cabooses back on to help alleviate this.
But so-far it's only been talk, at least in my area. Pretty stupidly only talk if you ask me.
Great video as always brother! To me there has always been a certain romance to the caboose. I had also wondered what happened to them; thanks for giving me some closure lol. Can’t wait to see what you put out next!
In Europe the caboose in freight trains was often seen placed direct after the locomotive.
Some German steamengines had even a guard house in the tender of the locomotive.
The caboose was used voor passenger lugage ,mail and handling freightdocuments.
Freighttrains had often a smal caboose just for housing the guard and handling freightdocuments)
The conductor (head guard) is the actual chief of the train so he had to look and confirm the signals along the line and could intervene with his own brakinglever.
Lots of old goods vans were converted in to a caboose for freightrains due to the high demand.
passenger trains had full lugage or combined passenger-lugage cars with a cupola or sponsons added to it.
There were even cabooses with only for women and toilet compartments for passenger trains.
The caboose has also disapeard from european railroads due to modern enginering.
But a guardhouse can still often be seen on modern multiple unit passenger trains.
The only thing that comes close to a caboose is the modern command vehicle on a railtrack worktrain.
I grew up next to a UP switchyard. I loved the caboose when I was a boy. I always wanted to ride in the cupola!
Had a work Christmas party (back when such things were possible) in a converted caboose, in London. Amazing experience!
Caboose is the most beautiful thing ever to be built for railroads
In the UK in the pre-grouping era we also had brake vans with the look outmposition above the vehicle roof just like the cupola but we called them Bird Cages.
I love the Ahoy style thumbnail
There’s still caboose at the end of tanker (oil) trains here in Thailand, which yes has cooking place, bed, Vaccum brake or air brake and bay window.
In Minneapolis , Minnesota there is a bar called The Cabooze. We all had Lots of good times there.
Absolutely love your choice of music, especially from Super Mario RPG, ah such a classic! 😍
I love your videos! I don't know much about trains, but I'm always excited to see a new one of these.
Hello from Australia
Here we sometimes call EOTs "BOGs" Battery Operated Guard some run on 6V dry cells others use trainline power they range from $200 - $8500 AU depending on what you run on a train
I've never had any particular interest in trains yet this was incredibly interesting and I could not stop watching. 👍
Very fun! Great to learn more about the history of rail as always!
A great place to stay is at the The Red Caboose in Strasburg, PA where they have about maybe 50 cabooses there converted into motel rooms. My family used to stay there all the time as a kid and now i go bacck there as an adult. They've also got a dinning car converted into a restaurant, a petting zoo, and also a great place to get Amish buggy rides.
Nice vid, the icon for it reminded me abit of Ahoy's vids and I was almost expecting to hear the music he uses for his Iconic arms series. x3 I hope to see more of this kind of vid for other rolling stock. :3
Also thought of something for it.
The caboose.
Power breaker.
Last in line.
Life saver.
In the continental Europe cabooses weren't as widespread as in the US. Not at least on long-distance freights, but these were common on local routes, where a freight train would collect or drop off one or two car from each station's team track on their way to a larger yard. The continental European caboose was usually an adapted two-axle freight car, either right from the factory or converted in a workshop later on. The only European country that had purpose-built cabooses I know of is Czechoslovakia - little, short, green, wooden two-axle cars with bayside windows and a observation platform at one end. The reason why it was used on local freights was the steam power used on them - the conductor and switchman could not perform their duties when staying inside already bustling cab of a locomotive. It wasn't also uncommon for locals to catch a ride on one of them in exchange for a bottle of moonshine or other "price", when there was no regular passenger train at given time and barely anyone had a car. Many of these cars were retired from service by mid-eighties or early nineties when steam locomotives were finally phased out in the last countries that used them, with Czech and Slovakian cabooses being used well into 21st century! Oh, and the US Transportation Corps stationed in West Germany from 1945 to 1989 had their own tailor-made cabooses, which were two-axle ones of "cupola" design - maybe so the crews could feel like at home :)
Here are some photos of East European cabooses I found in a short while:
wgk.cal.pl/data/media/181/30_54_9405_212-2_Da-k_CZ-CDC_st._Caslav_PP_Kolin_PJ_Nymburk_SOKV_Usti_nad_Labem.jpg
wgk.cal.pl/data/media/911/DSC05262.jpg
wgk.cal.pl/data/media/888/23K-brankard-milk.jpg
Excellent video nice work !
Darn, i expected some of Red Vs. Blue jokes, Dammit, Caboose!
This has GOT to be the worst comment section ever! Of all time!
Also fun fact about FREDs:
Their telemetry radios operate on the UHF band and the EOTs transmit at 2 watts.
The FOT transmits to the EOT @ 452.937.5 MHz and
The EOT transmits to the FOT @ 457.937.5 MHz
You can program these into your scanners to loosely figure out if a train is near you. This method won't work in high rail traffic areas as you'll hear a transmission every few seconds...
If I had to choose what kind of caboose is my favourite it’s the bobber caboose, theres something I just love about thinking of a massive freight train and seeing this tiny caboose at the end as it rolls pass.
I love the Iconic-Arms-esque thumbnail!
We have a re-serviced , I believe it's an Erie-Lackawanna, Caboose being used as an ice cream shop, in the Town of West Seneca, NY., a suburb of Buffalo (WNY). They did a beautiful job repainting and landscaping the area surrounding it. By the way, they're pretty busy.
When I was a kid I wanted to ride in a caboose. Thought it would be fun, maybe even more fun than riding up front in the engine.
Mario has been turned into a caboose.
7:32 quite comical seeing 2 cabooses protecting only 1 car and 1 heavy steamie
I remember the caboose on the Rutland Rail Road freight trains in the 60s. Two trains a day from Rutland VT to Bennington VT and back. About 60 miles each way.
Nice video. I have been on the caboose at 3:17 (LIRR 14) while visiting the Greenport Railroad Museum, which also has a great view of the present day Greenport Station. I tried to place a camera in the cupola with a westbound leaving the station, but the caboose was locked and I had to railfan just outside of the museum instead. But regardless, great job on this video. I had no idea that the infamous BQ23-7 was an attempt to replace the caboose.
You can still see Cabooses in daily service on the Union Railroad in Duquesne PA serving the U.S. Steel Mon valley works. They have about 22 miles of signaled mainline although track speed is only about 15mph
If I were in charge of UP or BNSF, my first order of business would be to bring cabooses back and look into modern steam technology.
Trains just look incomplete without a caboose! My model freight trains will always have a caboose!
Same, but I think all the major railroads oughta give steam another look; seeing promise in the 5AT Advanced Steam project fall through thus far (shame BR never took that idea seriously) and other developments like biofuel being tested with a heritage line or two (the one I recall also modifying an ATSF 2-10-2 to run on a puck-like biofuel that's like coal with less emissions AND much more renewable) on top of tech being compressed size-wise at large, we could be having a renaissance for steam on US metals (not just for heritage lines) and MAN it'd just be great to see us catch up to the UK and Japan for quality & number/% of steam engines preserved (ours being pretty abysmal since we went hard on dieselization).
Growing up with Thomas and seeing how developed & great the UK scene for heritage lines alone has left me feeling so cheated, being we don't have many in New England AND my hometown used to be a railroad town with a line RIGHT NEXT TO MY STREET SOME 40 FEET APART.
@@jaredhebert942 there’s also the ACE steam locomotive concept (which looks so much like a Diesel engine it’s not even funny) which uses (in theory) computer control to control the fire (the oxygen allowed to it and the fuel allowed to it) essentially our version of the SR leader class had it ever been built
@@sockshandle I completely forgot about the ACE 3000, really wish that got further in development
Always loved "The Caboose Mystery" by Gertrude Warner. Family rents a caboose for a vacation. Simple novel for kids. (Just trivia.)
It may be bit of a cost expense but boy do caboose give the railways the charm they're known for in point of view
I read stories that the caboose was were the party was at. Crews would smoke pot in the caboose. When they were done, they’d toss joints out the window. This would cause “grass” to grow by the side of the tracks!
Came for the Caboose, liked and commented for the Mario music
I've visited antebellum, Civil War and Golden Spike era model RRs seeing "old timer" bobber cabooses and other such caboose...I said nothing but thought...nahhh. not yet.
See it in movies and paintings too. Shortie coaches, combines and box cars are the most historic representation for end of train in the Great Locomotive Chase era.
0:18 in fact, the French right spelling is cambuse.As for the "brake van" ( 1:12 ), it is mainly because it had changed from a simple surveillance van to an effective break assiistance one, providing breaking power to the goods trains, the majority of goods wagons of the time not being equipped with individual brakes, even after the continuous Westinghouse air brake was introduced for passenger rolling stock.
set playback speed to 1.75 at 7:40
I think my only comment would be that it might have been good to get into why the office was needed. There's plenty of paper work to do and the why might have been good to cover. Otherwise it's really great and concise.
Another name for the FRED is the F---ing rear end device, at first I had taken it as a joke but while I was at a trade college training for railroad operations we actually had to carry one 1.5 miles and back again as if we had just finished hooking up a large consist and needed to add one to the end, long story short there is 100% no way to carry a FRED comfortably, it is extremely awkward to carry and it is unbalanced as if on purpose, the carry handle is near the base of the device near the hose connector meaning that the super thick and heavy hose is pulling one end down while the near weightless top half with the flashing light just wants to go straight up, even trying to carry one on your shoulder was hard, the hose would always swing and hit you with the metal connector, the super light metal box was huge and wouldn't rest on your shoulder nicely. They work great for what they do but god they are completely obnoxious to handle.
They rare to see on the rails but it's a sight to behold.
I really like the Ahoy style thumbnail! it fits the video while also referencing their channel.
Every once in a while I'll see a BNSF train with a green and yellow caboose in Colorado. It's very rare
alternate title: The Caboose: The history of what longer trains needed
Very good video. Nice job!
My great great uncle was a brake man he was killed doing his job in 1946 in upstate ny. He survived the battle of monte casino came back then promptly died falling off the top of a box car
You know, I would love to see what a more modern take of the Caboose would look like
I lived next to a railroad when I was growing up and really hated it when they did away with the Caboose.
I learned so much about cabooses from this video! Well Done! :)
Can't say I pay all that much attention to trains these days. A little since they are nifty tech, but nothing like when I was a kid (I think many can sympathize with me here). Working trains are pretty uncommon here. Hell the city only got its rail track back in working order a few years ago and now some tourist trains come up once in a while and there are a handful of freight trains that come up. But since the tracks end halfway through town, there is little reason for any other trains to come up.
But the traditional caboose for whatever reason always stayed special for me. IDK why, I just think they are neat.
edit: grammar
The final nail in the caboose coffin was the Hinton collision. Showed how a man in the caboose did not add anything to safety.
This was made even better by the music from Super Mario RPG - Legend of the Seven Stars
Back in the day on the SNES that game was my favorite!
You could also say that the caboose was a short of cab house.
Rest in peace caboose you'll be missed
Parts of one are preserved in my shed. My grandpa took it on himself to "preserve" one. Now it's parts are a liquor cabinet. And people wonder why the SP had problems if everyone stole from them.
The FEC was also the first railroad to abolish their use of cabeese, and on the note of converting cars into cabeese, they also replaced a number of ventilated 40 foot boxcarsninto bay window cabeese, so that’s neat
In Lancaster, PA, there's a hotel that offers the chance to sleep in a caboose! There are various kinds and in various roadnames. It's very cool.
Hey AmtrakGuy365, great video!
Thing is, theres this tiny little shunting yard for one of the grain depots (for some reason in the middle of town) that has a small shunting loco and its respective although very rusty caboose which i find interesting that UP still uses it probably bc they cant procure a EOT or FRED.
I'd like to suggest that with the excessively long freight trains, a caboose or some variant thereof might again become a necessity before long.
I’ve seen some ex-atsf cabooses at a BNSF yard near Hinsdale I believe. Always a treat to look down on them from the overpass.
Probably being used as shoving platforms.
An excellent video. Hello from the Tracy Mountain Railway in Colorado, where the caboose is still very much in use. 💙 T.E.N.
Good show about the history about the caboose
On the CNW we called a caboose a waycar, gorilla cage, crumby (short for crumb box), and sometimes cabini.
Hi great video. I still see cabooses at the end of freight trains just at the state borders for long hauls. Other places they use a caboose once in a blue moon not too often. The deliveries they make are local runs. That's probably why you don't see cabooses that much anymore blah.😂
Railroad press once stated."The little cars were expensive to maintain and produced no revenue."... I believe the safety issue to the general public is price we pay ,however.
Cheektowaga NY, we have a caboose that’s being used as an ice cream parlor lol. It’s super cute. As well as a few more scattered around town as either part of rail museums or monuments
I can't really remember cabooses ever being a thing here in Europe.
Great backstory video! Thanks!
There's an old WC caboose converted into a remote control unit I'm my hometown. It's almost exclusively here and rarely ever leaves.
BNSF also have shoving platforms as well. I saw one of them
Chuga choo choo I'm a train and I approve this video!🚅🚅
I thought this was an Ahoy video at first.
the term caboose and break van are the same thing to most people but for me when i think break van i think a small grey/white/black van with to outside areas for viewing and a comfy inside with seats and a lever for braking but when i think a long rectangle usually red/yellow (very rarely green or blue) that’s basically just another coach not that i think of it i’ve never heard a caboose being used for braking usually because modern diesel trains are pretty god damn strong so yea that’s basically the difference i see between them