In the useless trivia department,

Former St. Joseph & Grand Island caboose #48 will be heading for a new home in northeast Kansas (within a few miles of the SJ&GI or at least the remains thereof) tomorrow. Car will be moving (on a semi of course) along US 36 east from Denver Colorado across Kansas. After 62 years in Colorado I'm not sure what the car will think of returning to the humid climate of the midwest!

Jason Midyette

Jason -

Not useless trivia at all! This is good news. Any idea as to exactly WHERE in northeast Kansas?

Les

SJ&GI 48 arrived at its new home (Between Atchison and Troy Kansas) yesterday. It's back on trucks, still needs platform steps installed and windows unboarded. It got to go for its longest trip on its own wheels in 62 years, all of 40' down the track with a hand held car mover, as the crane could not set up at the end of the track due to the ground being soft from recent rains. The car now sits at the end of about 250' of track.

Continuing the useless trivia theme, SJ&GI 48 was built around 1908 and scrapped in 1950. It is 40' long, rather large for a caboose. For some reason, it and at least one other SJ&GI caboose (which still exists as a derilict body west of Boulder Colorado) were shipped to Denver Colorado to be scrapped. (The SJ&GI was owned by the Union Pacific, perhaps the UP had a scrap contract with a firm in Denver, who knows). #48 spent almost 50 years serving as a gravel pit office, a crane company's yard office and a storage shed at the Forney Museum in Denver, I git the car in 1999, when the Forney Museum moved, It was going to be bulldozed later the day I moved it if no one had taken it. As it sits now the body is mostly original, with the exception of new siding and windows. The steel underframe and trucks are new, trucks came from the Colorado & Southern via the Colorado Railroad Museum, I had the steel underframe built.

The St Joseph & Grand Island ran between St Joseph Missouri and Grand Island Nebraska. Portions of the west end of the railroad are still used by the UP, the east end from St Joseph to Marysville Kansas was abandoned and torn up by the UP several years ago.

Jason Midyette

Major congratulations on the restoration and the move of the caboose! It looks great! And thanks for the photos. By chance do you have one of the caboose when you first got it? I'll bet it didn't look so good then. I love this kind of "useless trivia". Keep it coming.

NOT useless trivia at all, these are the most interesting posts on RYPN to me. Well done for saving these things, wish i was able to save stuff like that ! (sarcasm)
BTW dont forget the bits you may have from DSP&P 3 when you get a chance !


Mike Pannell

I do have some photos of the caboose when I got it. They are presently inside the caboose and thus not readily available. I will post some when I dig them out.

Jason Midyette