I just did a little looking and the Google photo is either 2008 or 2009 so it turns out to be a bit dated............mld

mld -

Well, that's good. Because it then looks like the second photo shows the caboose steps added. I was worried it might have been the other way around!

PMC-

Grace at the Historical Society sounds very conscientious. She also shows her naivete by thinking the caboose is Burlington. Not her fault. Just no one around to provide the proper information. I wonder if the other caboose is really Southern?

This reminds me of a depot display with a "New York Central" caboose. Even though the tour group I was on tried to convince the depot docent that the caboose was actually ex-Pennsylvania and not New York Central (the depot is NYC), he didn't buy it. "We found Central on the caboose when we cleaned it before painting". Yes...from when it was painted for the Penn CENTRAL!

At least the folks there in Turney acquired a couple of cabooses. So, good for them! Grace probably won't be able to find the railroad initials stamped in the side frame of the trucks, but maybe someone can. Let's hope so anyway.


Les

The miscellaneous photo section on the very useful wx4.org website has a photo of two C&EI cabooses being scrapped in the vicinity of El Paso, Texas in 1983.

http://wx4.org/to/foam/misc/photos.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20161117231935/http://wx4.org/to/foam/misc/photos.html

I'm surprised these cars made it this far west, given the plethora of scrap yards along the C&EI - Missouri Pacific territory.

Note the interesting Safety First stencil.

Do I hate to bring this confusing thread back from the dead? You betcha! But............

In doing updates for a publisher on the Las Cruces, NM RR Museum, I managed to ascertain the following:

1) The wooden caboose outside the museum--thankfully under a pole shed--is supposedly CB&Q 14327, ex-Fort Worth & Denver 102. No idea what it's doing in Las Cruces, and I can't find out how it got there from where. And we have seen misnumbered/fake rolling stock before, but this one sure looks true. Where did it come from?

2) the C&EI caboose that WAS listed by Kirpatrick 2nd ed. as being in Las Cruces at the McDonald's there was sold and moved to an undisclosed private owner in 2018:
https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/l ... 292257002/
It's one of the 1947 AC&F cabooses, C&EI 1-6. But which one, and where did it go?

3) Did we ever get the C&EI ones in Alamogordo, NM straightened out?
The one at Basin Pipe & Metal on US 54 north of town shows up in this December 2021 Google Street View ominously covered with graffiti and SITTING ON A TRAILER ready to move; anyone know where it went?

https://goo.gl/maps/9eUS1MSmTkcjxGtt7

The other one moved from the McDonald's to the Toy Train Depot in 2007, as previously noted, and if the info is correct, it's another C&EI center-cupola caboose, later MP; it still wears its McDonald's logo:

https://goo.gl/maps/HG5e6nLUJTwUoCYz5

Has anyone been to the Toy Train Depot, BTW?

Always good to have a thread updated! At least that's the way I feel about it. I checked this Google map photo of the site for the C&EI center-cupola caboose in Alamogordo, NM and noted a few things that I had not noticed in an earlier photo in this thread. First is that there apparently is some kind of train ride (amusement-park type or perhaps live steam?) and the track seems to offer a rather extensive ride. Including a section that goes around what apparently is THE Toy Train Depot, which is in a light blue metal building and NOT close to the depot. The depot itself says "Railroad Museum", and perhaps there are displays inside. Also alongside U.S. 54/U.S. 70, and directly across from the depot is a lower quadrant semaphore which, when they laid the long sidewalk alongside that highway, they went around the signal instead of removing it. Nice!

All good stuff. Thanks very much for the update. It also brought up the fact that we never did find out info on the cabooses at the preserved depot in Turney, Missouri, one of which is also a center-cupola steel caboose of the same type as the C&EI caboose which started this thread so long ago!!!!

Les