This "Tiny House Blog" has a report on a former Soo Line wooden caboose acquired from the Whippany Toonerville RR in 1975 and relocated to northeastern Pennsylvania as a vacation cottage; the owners have gone to the extreme of moving into it full time.

http://tinyhouseblog.com/tiny-house-con ... e-caboose/

Another post: http://tinyhouseblog.com/tiny-house-con ... #more-9527

back when railroads were eliminating cabooses you could go buy one maybe 50-100 bucks you move it. makes me wish now, but no money then.

$50-100 would have bought you a wooden caboose back in the days when the last of them were being eliminated, primarily the 1960s. The typical price during the 1980s, when the wholesale elimination of cabooses got underway, was considerably higher--I remember the flat price from Conrail being $2-3,000 delivered.

If you didn't really need the heavy wheels and trucks, like the forty-foot boxcars that preceded them, they were a nice, cheap way to get a metal box or office. But many the caboose owner will tell you, in hindsight, how poorly insulated they are.........

Boy, does that bring back memories. I lived weekends, on and off, in a caboose at IRM in the early seventies. Yeah, we used to shower at the KOA, or after season take bird baths in the john at Mary's,(same place we ate), but we basically lived there. Coldest I remember was -20 deg. F, we had a 60,000 BTU house furnace running, and it would only keep the interior at about 68 deg. F. The heads of the carriage bolts that held the grab irons were growing hoarfrost over the bunks, but we stayed warm. I think that made an indelible impression linking a caboose with security, warmth, protection, well being...

I have a baywindow Southern Railway caboose next to the house I used to live in (still own the house, now rent it). Anyway, here in the Carolina foothills we are more prone to ice storms than snow storms and one storm about 12 years ago was particularly bad.

After a day without power, I hauled my two girls (6 & 3) on my back down to the cab with sleeping bags while their mom opted to stay in the house, saying I was crazy.

It took me awhile to get some coal lit in the stove (finally used a little torch!), but it finally fired up and we ended up camping for two days in it, completely oblivious to the weather... my wife joined us about 6 hours later!!

Never will forget those memories... seemed like we were thousands of miles away in a different world.

Matt Bumgarner

Never "lived" in a caboose, but my daughters still remember "camping" in PE 1962 at Orange Empire. We'd stay out there over the weekend, usually helping on track construction under the direction of the late Bill "Windmill" Young. Years later, my older daughter was moving a pallet load of merchandise in a store room, and a rather officious fellow asked "Isn't that awfully heavy?", and she replied, "Doesn't bother me a bit. I used to build railroad track when I was a girl."

I used Long Island Rail Road 12 as a bunk house when it was at the Branford Electric Rwy. Ass'n. An electric heater would keep me warm while I was under the blankets, but the other end of the caboose was still freezing. It's now back on the island.

Greetings:
Dennis' post brings up a memory indellably etched in my mind which changed my life.
I too "lived" in a caboose at IRM for several years.
One winter night, after trudging a quarter mile through snowdrifts from the shop to where the cabooses were parked, I found that someone had "borrowed" the propane tank from the caboose where I stayed. I had to wrestle my tank off another caboose, drag it down the line, get it up onto the platform, hooked up and then wait for a hour or so until "Mr. Furnace" (our freind) got the interior warm enough to survive in.
During my wait for heat I thought about how much fun I was having, working on steam locomotives, for free at IRM.
That night I resolved to concentrate on finding paying jobs, so I could afford to live decently and not end up an old man found dead in a snow drift...
J.David

When it's cold, you will quickly find that a bay window caboose is your friend. All the heat rises to the top of a cupola caboose.