We are currently raising funds to send B&O Caboose C-2095 to the B&O Railroad Museum restoration facility to be restored. The caboose is located in Mount Airy, Maryland and was donated to a non-profit that I an involved with. The plan is to have it restored and then bring it back to town to use as our Visitor Center and a mini museum to showcase our Town's railroad history. This is part of a Rails to Trails project that we are working on as well and the caboose will sit along the trail that we are building.

Please see our crowdrise page at:
https://www.crowdrise.com/mountairycabo ... aiser/macf

or our Rails to Trails page at:
http://www.mountairyrailstotrails.org

Diane Martin
Mount Airy Community Fund

I was unaware that the B&O Museum was able or willing to take on outside contract work of this nature.

Yes, they are standing by waiting for C-2095. We are hoping to get it to them by mid August. We have been working closely with Dave Shackelford and Zel Olsen. We have a local crane company who moved it once for us already and are on board to move it to Baltimore and back for us.

I have to say that if you are not going to run it you pretty much need a good lead carpenter and a bunch of grunts to help out. In my own little opinion you should be able to source that out locally for about the cost of the move itself. I am very familiar with this type of caboose because I have done work on C-2013 and C-2042 at Wilmington and Western RR in the past.

$45k seems like a lot just to have the caboose sit there. Maybe instead of trying to get it professionally restored by the museum, who need money itself, you'd be better off doing the work locally. Maybe there's a local railroad group who would be interested, or the Boy Scouts?

We have thought about that and are actually getting quotes from others. We went out for bids on the job and the B&O Museum was the only organization interested. We do not, however, just want to slap a coat of paint on this and hope for the best. We want this done so that it can be our visitor center for years to come and in a condition that can be easily kept up. There are issues with potential lead paint and other hazards that need to be addressed responsibly. I would never just set a group of Boy Scouts onto something like this as they would have no concept of what should really be done and any hazards involved. The cost for materials and labor is actually $90K, but when you put that into perspective with what construction jobs cost these days, it's really not that bad. Having a 40'X16' deck re-decked (lumber not composite) and a new composite railing is going to run m $22K, so 6 months of detailed work and the addition of historic parts that B&O would add, is really not that bad. We plan on providing most, if not all, of the materials through in-kind donations so the actually labor costs will be closer to $60K. Yes, it's a lot of money, but this is history that we are trying to preserve to share with generations to come and to bring visitors to our town.

A word of warning about hiring a "master carpenter" and getting the work done locally... Most carpenters today have absolutely no experience with the structural use of wood, and unless you find someone who is attuned to historical restoration work and is willing to be a detective as he digs into the structure and is willing to figure out how to replace in kind, the authenticity of the piece will be compromised. A case in point, I'm aware of a ca. 1906 Soo Line caboose where the local carpenter removed both sides, trashed all the posts, diagonal braces and nailing girts, and replaced it all with simple stud walls built of 2x4's. When finished, the exterior looked substantially the same, but now not only is the original fabric gone, so is the original engineering design. Further, the common lumber used will not hold up to water infiltration anywhere near as well as the traditional car building woods, and if the car should ever be transferred to an operating museum environment, it will simply fall apart.

Lacking a local group with leadership willing to learn all the techniques to either preserve the original fabric or fabricate exact replacement parts, sending the car to a known restoration facility does make some sense.

Dennis,
That is our thoughts exactly. We've heard of some horror stories and do not want to go down that road. A carpenter is just that, a carpenter. A restoration expert is who we really need and Zell Olsen is one of the best (if not THE best) in the country and Zell is now very familiar with C-2095 as he helped with the first move and has been all over the caboose from top to bottom :)

About the only tradesman that could relate to wooden railroad cars would be a wooden boat builder who has worked on larger, traditional built (ribs and plank) boats. Even there, given their knowledge and respect for how wooden vessels require proper framing (thinking of how decks and cabins are built), it would still take some hand holding to explain the construction vagaries to him.

If you can get the B & O Museum to do the work, I'd go that route. Sometimes it's a whole lot simpler to write the bigger check than to write lots of smaller checks over and over again.

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

You will hear no complaints out of me for 1) committing to doing a job right (albeit at a price) and 2) helping to keep Mr. Olsen and his co-workers gainfully employed. If you can raise the monies for a quality job and keep the finished product protected from the elements when completed, more power to you, and I'll see if an appropriate donation can't be steered in your direction.

The only thing I worry about is the possibility of this goading "trackside superintendents" into a round of "all the stuff they have rusting/rotting away on their own tracks, and they're doing other people's stuff instead?" I'm not an accountant for the Museum, so I can't say if "proceeds" from this work go to museum coffers, towards other restoration work, or simply keep people on the payroll that otherwise might have to be laid off or seek other work, and unless someone gives them a huge endowment fund I'm not sure it even matters anyway.

Alexander,
Thank you so much for your support and if you can steer any funds our way we would greatly appreciate it. We truly want to do this the right way and we have the support of the Town Council and many others in town. We want this to be a community project as well as a project that spans the nation to bring in train enthusiasts. This is all part of our Rails to Trails project and I really knew very little about Mount Airy's railroad heritage. I've learned so much by being involved in this project and I've become quite fond of C-2095. I've met some very nice people from the B&O Historical Society (Harry Mheem and some others) and Dwight Jones has provided us with information and pictures. We also had someone pop up based on a newspaper article to let us know that he has the coal stove from the caboose sitting in his barn and is going to donate that to the project as well. So we have so many people involved in this, we can definitely make this happen, one way or another!

Other than railroad preservationists. Randy Hees' group in California seems to have a pretty good handle on things, as does the group in Maine that just built a new boxcar from the ground up... The crew at Strasburg seems to do a good job with their wood car fleet; yes, they tend to substitute modern materials, but in the interest of reduced maintenance rather than because of a lack of understanding of the original. Glenn Guerra from Guerra Museum Services of Wisconsin has done some nice on-site work.

My leaving anyone who should be mentioned out isn't intentional but simply a function of my fading memory... the fact remains, there are professionals out there who can do the work.

While not about your situation directly there's the huge issue with preservation for future generations: $90k to restore a caboose? Ouch!

Good luck. The B&O guys will do a good job.

Good luck with your restoration. I stand by what I've said about hiring a carpenter. I'm not talking about just opening the phonebook and calling one, just as would not open the phone book to boilers and contract the local boiler company to restore my favorite steam locomotive. There are highly skilled carpenters out there and by purchasing the materials yourselves and hiring the right guy you could complete this project for a fraction of the cost. On the other hand since you seem to be set on spending the money the B&O Museum is a fine organization and I'm sure they will do a splendid job.

One of the most concerning issues I have with having a carpenter do the job is concerning lead paint remediation. Would they know how to do the job and follow all of the rules/regs regarding handling and disposal of lead paint. The other problem is that the caboose is currently located in a town park. I do not know what ramifications the lead paint would cause if the job were to be done in the park and I'm not sure a carpenter would have a location to store the caboose and perform the work safely, meeting all environmental requirements.