As a child, few things were more exiting than watching a passing train. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting in the front passenger seat, a childhood treat the uniqueness of which becomes lost to us with age, watching trains go by with my father. We would go to the local hardware store/lumber yard, which had an old soda pop machine, and get glass bottles of Coke. This was the late ‘80’s to early ‘90’s, mind you, so glass bottles were hard to come by, which made these occasions that much more special. Dad would then take me to the nearby railroad, and we would sit there trackside in the parked car and wait for a train to come. The trains almost always did come, as the Union Pacific had a station in our town. As the freight train inevitably passed, we would open our bottles of Coke and drink them as we watched it go by. While this sounds like a old Coca-Cola commercial, for me it is a warm memory of bonding with my father, although all I was thinking about at the time was how cool the train was and how tasty my soda was, even if a little warm. 
I’m told that I loved trains right from the very start. When I was a toddler, I
would stand up in my highchair, worrying mother half to death that I was going
to fall, and squeal, “tain, tain,” whenever I heard the horn of a diesel engine. When I was just one year old, a steam locomotive came through town, and my father took my family and me to see it. My father got onto the train, and a conductor handed me up to him so that I could see the train too. A photographer caught the photo opportunity and I made the local newspaper, quite an accomplishment for a baby. Maybe that’s where the train love affair of my youth began.
Of course, what would train watching have been without cabooses? A red caboose was like “The End” at the close of a black and white movie. While the locomotive was so awesome, with its roaring diesel engines and the occasional friendly engineer who blew his mighty horn at my wave, the caboose was every bit as exiting. There was a mystique about it. The caboose looked like a big, red house on wheels. I assumed in my youthful ignorance that the conductor lived in the caboose. Why else would they put houses on trains?
But, by the time I came into the world, cabooses were becoming more and more a rarity. I can remember how disappointed I always was when I waited for the freight train to pass, building my anticipation with its length and lack of speed as it either stopped at or took off from the station, to see nothing but another freight car at the train’s end. The train looked like an amputee, with a long leg but no foot. Later on, I noticed at night that the end car had this dumb looking little box with a blinking light. Why in the world would the conductor prefer a tiny blinking box at the end of his train rather than his house? I didn’t know then that the “Union Pacific” painted on the sides of the trains I watched was not a mere funny logo, but the massive organization that really owned the trains, and their cabooses. I didn’t know that the massive organization had accountants whose shrewd schemes were the culprit of the ruin of my little red cabooses. Eventually, Dad explained to me that companies ran the trains, and it was the companies that were getting rid of their cabooses, and not the conductors. He didn’t know why any more than I did, and he didn’t like it any more either.
And so it came that as I grew, and came into responsibilities and priorities like school, which I found out was indeed every bit as “not fun” as everyone had warned me, Dad and I watched the trains together less and less. Bottles of soda pop became cans of soda pop, I became a child and then a teenager, Dad became older and less healthy, life became smaller, more boring and less colorful, and nearly all trains became trains with no cabooses.
Fast-forward to just three weeks ago. I was heading down the interstate beside a Union Pacific line at night, when I spotted some oddly shaped green boxcars. As I got closer, I realized that these were not boxcars, but green Burlington Northern cabooses. Suddenly, all these memories associated with cabooses, mostly from childhood since it has been many years since I’ve seen a caboose, flashed through my mind. What a rare sight in 2007! I could hardly believe my eyes. Not one or two, but four cabooses hitched together, with no freight cars or engine in sight.
I told my parents of this unusual and welcome encounter with what felt like old, long lost friends. My father, an avid reader, handed me a book he had bought years ago, titled simply Caboose (Mike Schafer, 1997, Motor books International). In this book I found a wealth 
of knowledge and stories about cabooses. Better yet, the book is overflowing with full color pictures of every type and model of caboose imaginable.
Also contained within Caboose is the story of the origin, golden and silver ages, and eventual downfall of the caboose. Finally, a mystery of my youth is solved: Whatever happened to my cabooses? As it turns out, the death of cabooses, while much reviled and mourned by enthusiasts and children alike, was sensical and inevitable. Cabooses began life in the 1840’s as old boxcars modified to serve as makeshift offices and overnight hostels for conductors. It turns out my childhood assumption that the caboose was the conductor’s house was not far off. The idea caught on, and eventually nearly every railroad assigned a caboose, made either by the railroad at its shop or by boxcar manufacturing companies, to each of its conductors. Many conductors took pride in their cabooses, personalizing them to taste.
The end for cabooses began with the end of the steam age. The railroads had set waypoints every 150 miles, at which the steam locomotives could receive maintenance and coal, and the team of the conductor, rear brakeman and flagman (the standard crew aboard cabooses) could be switched out for a fresh crew. Of course, the conductors’ cabooses would be switched out, too, along with the conductors. How this became a problem after dieselization is pretty self-evident. Diesel engines don’t need to stop repeatedly during freight runs; they only need to refuel. Otherwise, they make their entire run, from one end of the line to the other, usually hundreds of miles, in one trip. It was quite the inconvenience and unnecessary expense to stop every few hundred miles and keep the trains waiting while the caboose was switched out just to bring aboard a fresh crew. The immediate solution: caboose pools (think carpool).
By the 1970’s, most cabooses were no longer assigned to single conductors. They were used and maintained, to varying degrees, by every crew that occupied them during the run. It made financial sense to keep the caboose on the train during each run, and simply switch out the crews. But, as with every solution, there were new problems. Apparently, the conductor and his crew, who often stayed overnight for several nights at a time in his caboose, served as a good deterrent for would be vandals. Without assigned crews, cabooses were largely left defenseless. For the first time, built in security became a priority, and caboose windows were fitted with bulletproof glass and sealed shut.
And then came the nail in the coffin: technology. Yes, that bastard of a blinking box right off of Darth Vader’s chest. ETDs (end of train devices) were slowly implemented at first, but in 1969-1971, the Florida East Coast Railway needed a new way to deal with its unions and strikes, and ETDs did the jobs of three men. Obviously, the other railroads took notice that FEC was successfully running their trains with less than half the traditional number of men. Thus, as the train crews shrank from five to two, the need to house them on the train largely disappeared. Also, inflation and increased safety awareness and regulations hiked the costs of producing new cabooses and maintaining old ones. Cabooses simply weren’t needed anymore. The fleet of cabooses on U.S. rails went from 18,000 in 1960 to a few hundred in 1990.
As it turns out, I consider myself lucky. I was probably one of the few kids of my generation to see so many cabooses pass by. I guess I was likely watching these cabooses as they headed to the other end of the Union Pacific line to be decommissioned, gleefully unaware. Had I been born just a few years later, I probably would not have those memories of waiting to see the caboose at the end of the train, while sitting in the car drinking bottles of soda pop with my dad. Like so many icons from youth, my cabooses are mostly gone now, but I have those memories to treasure for the rest of my life, and that is truly special.
All photographs in this publication, except for the black and white photograph of me, are excerpted from Caboose and are copyrited. I do not intend to infringe on any copyright or violate any law by including these photographs in this publication. I am using these copyrighted photographs as part of my constitutionally protected expression, and I believe they qualify as fair use because I do not intend to affect any of the rights of Motorbooks International or Mike Schafer, these photographs have not been released into the public domain, and they serve to illustrate the history of cabooses and the contents of the book Caboose. Any other use of these photographs may be copyright infringement.
