Was asked to go over and cast an eye over this caboose with a view to helping the museum in Encampment WY to move it for restoration. Its an intriguing beast and is said to be a 1894 caboose used on the Saratoga and Encampment Valley RR, however its never appeared in any photos on the line and was removed from its trucks and put on the ground by 1928.
It has a very squat cupola and traces of caboose red on the ends and UP caboose dark Green inside and obviously sliding doors, it could of course be a early boxcar caboose conversion too.
Hopefully a closer inspection may reveal more.

Anyone want to have a stab at its ancestry or possible builder ?

Mike Pannell

I won't guarantee this car found its way west from the New York Central, but it looks like it could have. Proportions, including the squat cupola, suggest so. The side door, and the UP looking paint, may have come later. It has certain details that don't appear on presumably later NYC cars, among them the end windows and the fancy-looking brackets under the eaves above the platforms.

Photo courtesy of Railcitymusem.com:

http://www.railcitymuseum.com/RAIL_CITY ... MAG024.JPG

http://www.railcitymuseum.com/RAIL_CITY ... al_RR.html

http://www.chathamrailroadmuseum.com/wo ... ose-18452/

An NYC car with those brackets but no end windows; this particular car is from a series built between 1882 and 1914, and given a general rebuilding to standard design by 1925-1929:

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/images/nyc-17944.jpg

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/NYC- ... ABOOSE.htm

You certainly do find some really neat cars in Wyoming! A drier climate works well to keep old, abandoned wooden cars around for a long time. This is not a problem here in northeast Kansas.

Given that the Union Pacific assumed majority ownership of the Saratoga & Encampment in 1928 and retired all of the railroad's original equipment at that point, I would guess that this was the railroad's original caboose. I would again guess that it was bought used and thus could have come from anywhere.

The S&E's original locomotives came from the Central of Georgia, perhaps the railroad went caboose shopping in the south as well. You might get lucky and find a number and RR initials above one of the end doors.

As a random side note, the short lived Rocky Mountain Railway, a logging road in Rout County Colorado built in 1905, had a very similar looking caboose. The RMRy bought its equipment used as well, from an east coast dealer.

Anyway, neat find, I hope that the move to the museum is successful.

Jason Midyette

Mike, I'm going to have to second the assessment that the caboose in Encampment may be of New York Central ancestry... The Danbury Railway Museum has one that is nearly identical and was under some restoration work when I was last at the museum a few years ago. If that caboose is indeed of New York Central ancestry, it may be one of the cars built by MDT (Merchant's Dispatch Transportation Co.)...
http://www.danbury.org/drm/nychr19322.htm

Thanks for all the replies, the caboose was purchased secondhand from a Chicago equipment dealer in the early 1900's so could very well be a NYC. It matches up very well to the Danbury one and I have contacted them for internal shots and measurements, we should be able to see the internal arrangements even if its faint outlines of what was there.


http://www.danbury.org/drm/nychr19322.htm

Mike Pannell