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 Post subject: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:07 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pm
Posts: 11482
Location: Somewhere east of Prescott, AZ along the old Santa Fe "Prescott & Eastern"
Time for the preservation vultures to circle:

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/n ... 142997002/

Quote:
The popular red cabooses that have hosted tailgaters for 20 years at the University of Louisville's Cardinal Stadium may be going the way of coach Bobby Petrino.

Well-heeled boosters have rented the 14 railroad cars for partying before and after Cardinals football games. But now the U of L Athletic Association has notified the company that leases them out that its own lease will be terminated.

U of L wants the cabooses, or the space, for itself.

"I am very hurt," said Maury Buchart, an owner of the company, Caboose Express, which spent $1 million in 1999 to buy the cabooses and to build a rail spur to deliver them to their home west of the stadium.


More at the link, including photos of some of the extravagantly-redone cabooses.

I think the odds that any of these will end up available to preservationists at any price (even at $100K apiece or whatever) are slim, but who knows? Or, for all you know, an operation could grab one of these and outfit it as a self-contained "Party Caboose" for excursions. A few operations, such as the Verde Canyon RR, do very well renting out their cabooses at premium prices. Got a "birthday caboose"? Imagine a super-premium "party caboose" for adults!


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 Post subject: Re: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:49 pm 

Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm
Posts: 2875
WTH? How many of these things are there? Just yesterday I saw an add for a "Cockaboose" (cool your jets, it's a bird, the team mascot) for sale in South Carolina.

Apparently they have a row of them too, and they look pretty much exactly like the ones you've linked to. Here's an older article on the place.
https://www.zillow.com/blog/house-of-th ... se-114515/

I can't find the link to the current one for sale right now, I posted it on Facebook, but it seems to be having digital dysfunction all day, so I can't find it.

The installation looks enough alike that I had to look twice to be sure it wasn't the same place. The two that are for sale in SC are "as is" (very nice) "where is", with no indication they need to be removed.


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 Post subject: Re: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:55 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pm
Posts: 11482
Location: Somewhere east of Prescott, AZ along the old Santa Fe "Prescott & Eastern"
Bobharbison wrote:
WTH? How many of these things are there? Just yesterday I saw an add for a "Cockaboose" (cool your jets, it's a bird, the team mascot) for sale in South Carolina.


In case you weren't being facetious, as far as I can tell there are only two of these arrangements of multiple cabooses at stadia for tailgating, both down South were college football is a religion: USC Columbia and the U of Louisville set. Ironically, the USC cabooses are all old IC/ICG wide-vision cabooses.

Just around the corner and up Berea Road from the USC stadium, however, is another complex, called "Touchdown Zone," which has another 15 cabooses, one C&NW(?) bay-window and 14 Soo Line wide-vision cupola ones. The Soo cabooses allegedly were part of a lot that traveled with RailAmerica reporting marks by way of Superior, Wisc. and Fairfield, Iowa. One of those cabooses is on the market right this moment for $168,900, as opposed to the oft-cited $299K being asked for one on the stadium grounds in 2013. There are also four full passenger cars on that lot, according to Google Earth. Who has something on those?

I was told some years ago that someone at Clemson University, another football-as-religion school, attempted to copy the concept, but either couldn't find enough cabooses or couldn't come to terms with the stadium or nearby landowners. Clemson does have a SR bay window caboose in its Botanical Gardens, a gift of the Class of 1939, and there used to be another SR bay-window privately owned by a Norman Canoy, a businessman, in Clemson. The latter caboose seems to be MIA now; speculation is Mr. Canoy, last of Ole Norm's Hardware, is in his 80's and the caboose was sold. The one reference I can find to its later fate is somewhere on Facebook where no one's getting into at the moment......

In addition, single cabooses have been set up at many, many stadiums here and there; there's one at the high school in Brunswick, Md. and one at the stadium at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. (originally named Western Maryland College after the RR--ironically the caboose, a gift of the Class of 1984, is a B&O I-5 wooden caboose and not a WM one!).

More on Columbia's:
https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/south ... tradition/


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 Post subject: Re: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 8:10 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 9:54 am
Posts: 1016
Location: NJ
One of the interior images looks like a Stillwell coach, from the ceiling shape. Yes?


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 Post subject: Re: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 8:31 pm 

Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm
Posts: 2875
Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:
Bobharbison wrote:
WTH? How many of these things are there? Just yesterday I saw an add for a "Cockaboose" (cool your jets, it's a bird, the team mascot) for sale in South Carolina.


In case you weren't being facetious, as far as I can tell there are only two of these arrangements of multiple cabooses at stadia for tailgating, both down South were college football is a religion: USC Columbia and the U of Louisville set. Ironically, the USC cabooses are all old IC/ICG wide-vision cabooses.


I wasn't... 24 hours ago, I had no idea such a thing existed. I was aware of a few single cabooses at various stadiums etc, but not a whole row. I found out about one, and then a day later a second one pops up. Runs off to buy lottery ticket...


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 Post subject: Re: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:12 pm 

Joined: Fri Dec 03, 2004 9:42 pm
Posts: 2875
OK, Flakebook is back. Here's the link to the two Cockabeese for sale for a cool $400K if you're a Railfan who likes college football.

https://columbia.craigslist.org/for/d/c ... 46428.html


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 Post subject: Re: 14 U. of Louisville Stadium Cabooses May Get Axe
PostPosted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:08 am 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pm
Posts: 11482
Location: Somewhere east of Prescott, AZ along the old Santa Fe "Prescott & Eastern"
Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:
"Touchdown Zone," . . . There are also four full passenger cars on that lot, according to Google Earth. Who has something on those?


Looks from the FB ad photos that two are old LIRR modern boxes-on-wheels cars and one may be the Stillwell mentioned earlier..........


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