Someone posted a query about how much a caboose weighs because they bought one for $8K and need to move it. Someone told him it weighs 35 tons. I agree with the new owner of the caboose that the estimate, I guess from the crane operator, is a little high. The Southern RR caboose X696 is in the town of Marshall, NC and is home to radio station, WART (Madison County Arts Council service at www.wartfm.org). It was moved there a couple of decades ago and somewhere I found info about another caboose with a figure of 47,500 pounds making it somewhere around 23 tons. You may call the city of Marshall and ask for the city manager if he knows anything about the move and if there is more information when they did move it. Southern leases the caboose to the town for $1 a year but want nothing done to it. I have not contacted Southern about painting or anything.

JBT - welcome to the Interchange.

Someone here may have that exact info for that class of caboose on an equipment diagram as that’s probably the best place to look. If not, a WAG would be around 25 tons or so including the trucks. But the range could fall within 22 to 28 tons. IIRC, caboose trucks weigh about 5 tons each. That’s a good number to know if you need to ship them separate due to the total height of the caboose on its trucks being too tall on whatever trailer or dolly you ship it on.

Those numbers should be in the ballpark for estimating.

Just a couple of weeks ago we moved an ex-Wabash C16 class wood caboose. It weighed 43,000 lbs.

My 1908 wood sided caboose weighed 38,000 lbs when we moved it. Each set of trucks weighed 7,000 lbs.

Is the caboose in question actually Southern X696? If so, it’s gonna weigh more than a woody. Those SRR bay windows were 40’(?) steel cars.

My M-8 Class SCL cab weighs in at 49,500 pounds and it is one of the largest steel cabooses made in large numbers. Can't imagine any cab weighing more than that that isn't a one-off.

I concur that the weight of each truck would be about 5 tons.

B&O's bay window cabooses built by International Car and Fruit Growers Express weighed between 66,100-69,600#.

Hoowee, those are hefty buggers. Why so heavy I wonder?

If I had to guess (and I don't have to...) I'd say they wanted them solid enough so they could use pushers behind the caboose, rather than taking the time to cut them in and out ahead of it.

^ That's correct. They had to be strong enough to be used infront of read end helpers. Concrete floors.

The whole idea of steel frames was so they wouldn’t get squashed in front of a helper. However, I can maybe see a heavier frame spec’d considering they may be shoved by an EM1 or two on coal drags. But knowing the B&O, it doesn’t seem likely to me that they’d spend the money to make them stronger than a hopper but ya never know. However, the concrete floor would make sense for adding more weight to make them a bit less likely to pop off the track.

Interesting.

Maybe the B&O didn't care, but on the Q, our concern was that the rear end crew didn't get squished in front of the pushers. Before we did away with way cars, the rules were changed so that crews rode the pushers, and most of our guys were doing that anyway, long before the rule change.

In my time we mostly had all steel way cars, wide vision or similar, weight unknown to me. So far as I know, none had concrete floors. Many, many times I would wait at the junction by the 23rd St roundhouse while our "Salt Mine" switch job sorted out a long cut of cars and sent them sailing down into the yard. Power was always an SD9, and they always had a hold of them with one of our steel way cars (these days they call them "shoving platforms"). Once they were lined up and the pinpuller gave a kick sign, the engineer would kick off the independent and rack that sucker out to throttle eight all at once. Every time he did so, that way car would lift up in the air until all eight journal boxes bottomed out on the pedestal binders. The noise was deafening, black smoke poured from that 567, and the way car danced crazily in the air until the pinpuller gave a stop. The cycle was repeated over and over as long as they had cars to switch. In 13 years I never saw a derailment from this practice. The only time anybody rode in the way car was when they didn't have any cars....

Sorry if I've wandered from the topic, but THAT was railroading !!!

Sammy - I’ve witnessed the same thing years ago up close and personal except it was a 40’ box car. Could’ve sworn it would’ve derailed but it didn’t. That was a YIKES! moment. I’m also intimately familiar with what can happen shoving a heavy train around a curve with lightweight cars in front of the locos. Kinda made a really big mess. Those are short stories best told over a couple of long beers.

But you’re right, we’re getting way off topic.

Eric, You're right about grabbing a couple of long beers...