Amazing discovery today as i was dismantling the LH side cupboards/lockers and bunk, From out behind the iceboc i pulled 8 metal and 3 fabric/card cupola number board stencils, these were used very early on from when she was built in 1913 for only a few years, its almost impossible to find a picture of a UP caboose displaying the train number so these are a huge huge find and even more important seeing that i am going to reconstruct working number boards. Also found where sticks of grease wrapped in paper (for hot box emergencies ?) and white glass from the number boards and hurricane lamps. Many tools came out from behind the cupboards too, the two little gauges are interesting are they tyre or flange thickness gauges ?

Pictures here

http://car57.zenfolio.com/p940861892/h5 ... #h577d1cee

Mike Pannell

Your projects get more and more interesting to say the least!

I wonder how this stuff wound up "in the wall" of this caboose. Some of it is stuff that would be on the car, but those stencils and things would seem to be something that should have been in the car shop. Then again, could they have been placed behind the glass to show the numbers as lit from behind?

Hmmm, I also wonder if those stencils, if used in the number boards, are close to those used on the train indicators locomotives wore? Maybe they are even interchangeable with what was used on locomotives. That would make a lot of sense, fitting in with some sort of standardization program.

These were stencil numbers that were used in front of milk glass displaying the train number in the middle window of the caboose cupola, the sole reason for the smaller middle window front and back, they were a six number board e.i, X-0000. The had a opening reflector case with two small hurricane lamps inside to light the displays.

Mike Pannell

You just went and tickled my brain cells, making me recall that the Chesapeake & Ohio did the same thing with at least one caboose series from the 1920s. The cars not only had the windows in the center of the cupola, but a pair of chimneys in the cupola roof for the lamps. These chimneys apparently don't survive on any existing C&O cabs, but the windows do.

http://www.richyodermodels.com/rym_fc_co_caboose.htm

Very cool finds. The two things you think are gages look like "keepers" for a swivel pin, sort of a flat cotter "pin". The greasy stuff is hot box coolant/hot box "dope", trade name is "Koolax". Cabooses were full of that stuff, because of hotboxes back in the days before journal pads.

Those numeral stencils are great!

All we ever find are old petrified Goldfish crackers behind the seats!

Howard P.

The Southern Pacific also used caboose train indicators during the period of UP control. Some pictures in ht SP caboose book by Tony Thompson.

attached is the patent drawing of what we are talking about, thanks to an RYPN contributor to a previous post about the indicator boxes.

Mike Pannell

What do we have here?

http://car57.zenfolio.com/p940861892/e577d2624

Could this be the Bishop's coupling knife?

Doesn't Car 57 provide you with enough of a challenge, Mike?????
Cheers, Bob

Is it metal or petrified leather? If the later then probably a strop (for maintaining the edge of a straight razor).

Wouldn't think a coupling knife would have a doubled over end, but on a strop that would be where it was tethered to a wall or barber chair (maybe even pinched in a closed cabinet door).

Rich C.