I am proud to announce that another wooden caboose survivor has been found in private hands in Oakland Township Michigan and is in immaculate original condition I have not been able to find anything anywhere on the caboose online and appears to have been off the grid for quite a while. I will not disclose the exact location due to privacy concerns I will however post pictures and tell the story the owners who were extremely kind to give me permission to photograph and let me in the caboose as to how it got there. Apparently, the owners before they purchased the house happened to have connections with someone or some company who owned cabooses ( i would presume they had connections with the C&O themselves considering the last date on the caboose i could find was 11-9-63 and given it was a wood caboose was probably retired not long after) anyways, the caboose was taken to Rochester Hills, MI via rail where it was loaded onto a truck with the caboose frame separated from the trucks and reattached with the trucks at the house and ever since has sat there. I discovered the caboose since it was on my morning commute to school when I had first seen it i couldn't believe my eyes that there was actually a caboose tucked this far away. Whether it was on trucks, rails or an official caboose I had no clue at the time. After I had graduated said school years later I happened to remember the caboose and decided to finally put an old question to rest and went to the house to present myself and ask if I could inspect it or see if I could find any markings on it identifying the build date or other things. The owner actually let me inside of the caboose which they were making sort of an office space and happened to have an old cast iron stove whether or not it was original i have no clue but the caboose appeared to be in all original shape and well taken care of if anybody can identify when the caboose was built or have any information on it I would greatly appreciate every bit of it. I have to ask though if you do happen to find this caboose in any way shape or form I would advise you please do not leak the location of it while I do not believe anybody here would do it I would hate for the owners to be bombarded with railfans/foamers at the door wanting to see the caboose.

Thanks in advance!
- Gabe

P.S RYPN was having a hard time loading the photos from my Nikon because they kept hitting the resolution limit so these are downsized if you would like the full higher resolution photo let me know and ill try my best to set something up so i can get them to you.

There is a nearly identical caboose (90853) available as a vacation rental in Natural Bridge, VA. It's painted red but is otherwise identical to 90879 on the outside. The owner states that it dates to 1926. Not exactly a museum-quality provenance, but it's a start.

Link to pic. of 90853: https://www.virginia.org/listing/1926-c%26o-caboose/8564/

Question: I was told that the B&O built all of their cabeese at Gassaway, WV. I should qualify that by saying "all of their wood cabeese". Any body know if that's true? There was once an extensive shop at Gassaway including a roundhouse, turntable, and a car shop with
a transfer table. All is now gone, but rumor has it that the turntable in now a local bridge. Thanks for any input. Ned

(This probably belongs in a separate thread)



Gassaway was the main shop for the Coal and Coke RR, which was acquired by the B&O in 1918. C & C (apparently) built a dozen bobber cabooses at Gassaway, and these became B&O property with the merger.

I took a brief look at a book on B&O cabooses by Robert Hubler. It appears that very few other cabooses (perhaps no others) were built at Gassaway.

JR

Back to the C&O, you can buy for $9.99 on Amazon.com a copy of the C&O Historical Society publication Freight Car Equipment of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway August 1, 1937 which should have information about this class of cabooses.

No financial interest of mine, but this is a good time to mention "Lead Out" paint stripper for the interior of a caboose such as this. It ain't inexpensive, but the solvent softens the paint while the chemical ingredient binds up the lead into a non-toxic disposable.
Look it up on line. EPA approved, according to their literature.

https://eco-buildingproducts.com/produc ... nt-remover

Found another C&O Historical Society Publication, subtitled A Concise History and Fact Book which contains on p. 81 a photo of identical caboose 90872 with the following information:

Built April 1926 by Standard Tank Car Company
Weight 34,500 lbs.
Class K3-4
Repainted May 1931 into Advisory Mechanical Committee standard red with white lettering
Class repainted circa 1956-57 into Signal Yellow

Standard Tank Car Company was acquired by General American Tank Car in 1927. The photo was taken at shop "RA" (probably Raceland, KY) at the time of the 1931 repainting.

(The Advisory Mechanical Committee set standards for all the Van Sweringen roads - C&O, Nickel Plate, Pere Marquette, Erie.)