I am, and always have been, a big fan of trains. Train tracks run right through Shepherdstown and we often get stopped by trains. Some of the trains a pretty long, and sometimes it’s a long wait for them to pass, but this is a minor annoyance compared to a lot of other things that annoy me.
Anyhow, a couple of days ago, we were stopped and when the end of the train went past, I remarked, “well, there’s the end.” Claire said, “and no caboose.”
Caboose is funny sounding word and when I was growing up, all freight trains had a car at the end of the train called the caboose. When I was little, we used to wait for the caboose at the end of the train to give the crew a wave when they passed by — they always waved back.
For many years, cabooses were a part of every railroad — what happened to all those cabooses?
The caboose was introduced in the 1830s — its earliest beginnings can be traced back to a small railroad in upstate New York and a crewman named Nat Williams that worked on the Auburn and Syracuse railroad. Nat converted a little used boxcar into a small space to store items and keep them organized. Additionally, he took care of the railroad’s paperwork in this car at a makeshift desk, made out of a wooden barrel.
The early cabooses were no more than just flat cars with a cabin built atop them to shelter the crew working the rear of the train. They developed into separate cars with a platform on either end, and a cupola on the top, that acted as a lookout tower for the train crew. The cabooses were fitted with red lights, called markers, to enable the rear of the train to be seen at night. (This led to a common railroad phrase, “bring up the markers” to describe the last car on a train.)
Cabooses provided the train crew shelter at the rear of the train. The crew could exit the train for switching, inspect the train for problems and to protect the rear of the train when stopped. the conductor kept records and handled business from a table or desk in the caboose. For long trips, the caboose provided minimal living quarters and was frequently personalized and decorated with pictures and posters.
As the world progressed, many cabooses were phased out from mainline freight trains and the end of train (EOT) device became standard railroad equipment. Also, various technological advancements were introduced including remote switching and defect detectors. So while cabooses worked for the railroads for well over one-hundred years, the new technology provided increased accuracy and significantly decreased operating costs. The EOT performed all the duties of the caboose and didn’t require any additional manpower.
Just about every caboose I remember was painted red — I know that not all were, but almost all were. Red was chosen to increase visibility. Railroads wanted to paint their cabooses a color that could easily be seen from a distance for safety.
I suppose that I should mention that the word “caboose” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a part of a train that is attached at the back end and is used by people who work on the train.” If you didn’t already know what a caboose was, I’m not sure you could draw much of a mental picture from that description…. so I dug a little deeper than Merriam-Webster and found out that the first “caboose” had nothing to do with railroads. The word first appeared in English in the mid-18th century and meant a small cooking cabin or kitchen on the deck of a merchant sailing ship. It was also used to mean the cast iron cooking stove inside the cabin. The word caboose comes from the Dutch “kabuis” (or Low German “kabuse”) meaning “cabin on a ship’s deck.” The use of caboose to mean a crew car on a train didn’t come along until the mid-19th century.
So I guess that’s about enough for today…. see? my train of thought does have a caboose.
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