Hello all,

I am helping a local town museum in my area with a large potential undertaking. The museum has been offered a 30 foot Northern Pacific wood caboose, sans trucks. The caboose has a fantastically preserved original interior. The Conductors desk, bunks, ladders, dump valve, even the toilet are all there. The catch? The outside sheathing and a lot of the framing is rotted to the point of being unusable. Our idea is to strip the caboose of the interior, and install that interior in a replica shell. It may be daunting, but it may also be doable.

So, to get this project underway, could anyone here point me in the direction of some blueprints for NP 30 foot wood cabooses?

Also, does anyone here have any experience with this kind of rebuild/replication project? Car57, I know you've salvaged chunks of caboosine interiors. Anyone have some helpful pointers before we dig into this project?

Thank you.
-- Drew Black

Remove the outside sheathing and then repair the rotted framing one area at a time. You will need temporary bracing to support the caboose as you work on the framing. Use wood repair epoxy and penetrant systems to retain repairable parts, and replace bad portions with new dry wood in kind. Treat the caboose framing while it is repaired but still naked against insect and other infestation before closing it up. Then replace the sheathing with wood milled to match the original siding. The Wrightsville & Tennile caboose was about a third eaten by termites when it came to Savannah, and we repaired it using this strategy and retained a lot of its original fabric and in a fairly cost effective way.

For blueprints try the Northern Pacific Railroad Historical Society or the Northwest Railroad Archives.