Western Railroad Discussion > How safe was a caboose

I don't remember this ever being covered on TO.  I was wondering how safe was the caboose?  Were there many accidents where the occupants were injured or killed?  I know in the late 1970's or early 1980's, as a firefighter, my engine company was on a five unit strike team that went to a bad accident east of Barstow, where two were killed riding in a caboose.  I just thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss.

If an engineer didn't know how to slack a man could get killed back there. You always had to be braced for a sudden change in slack running in or out or if the air dynamited. When walking in the caboose you made sure to hang unto the ceiling rail to keep from getting knocked off your your feet. As far as comfort goes, you often froze in the winter with faulty stoves and roasted in the summer even with all the windows and doors open but it especially hard at slow speeds on a hot day ith little wind.

Towards the end of their existence, the roads began backing off much maintainence and it was pretty obvious especially when they started blocking off windows to avoid the cost of FRA glass replacements.

exprail

If you are sitting down it was usually safe, some even have seat belts.  If you were on an all articulated intermodal train like Santa Fe ran there was not much slack at all and not a real problem.  If you were on a train in motion and moving about the caboose, it was always good to be able to grab a hand rail just in case.  If you are rear ended by another train all bets are off.

I was on a short train (40 or so cars) going down a 2.2.  The engineer stopped on the grade to recharge, and stopped stretched. I was in the cupola puffing on a cigar, as soon as the brakes started releasing I told the "passenger" to grab something and hold on.  Even with 40 cars it was a pretty abrupt stop when all the slack rolled in.

Back when I used t.o file Accident & Injury Reports an FRA Inspector told me that getting rid of cabeese reduced the nuber of reports filed by half. I believe it

In a 43 year railroad career I had one caboose related injury, I burned two fingers in attempting to remove an alladin lamp chimney, to replace the mantle, and the chimney was still too hot.  

Maybe a better question is how much safer were train operations with an occupied caboose?

I always thought that in latter years slack action became a bigger problem, maybe sloppy train handling, maybe longer trains......
 

Seatbelts and shoulder harnesses in newer CNW waycars in the 60's. Shoving in Proviso hump yard with one car and a waycar plus engine, all with air, top of the hump dropped 30 loads on us and hind man, sleeping on bench seat, wonld up against the door. Don't know if he picked up splinters from sliding the length of the floor, or if he went airborne. He had no business snoozing in a waycar anyway. Kids would throw rocks, not a good idea to sit casually near the glass, that's why a lot of waycars had heavy screen on the windows. UP waycars were comfiest if you could score one westbound out of Proviso. Always put your feet up against the steel on the inside of the bay, sit facing forward for sure. Stay the hell off the platform on hot road jobs, the slack will pitch you into a cornfield. Hang on tight if you're on the platform making a joint, or you could wind up in between. Lock the doors if you can on transfer jobs to the Panhandle on the South Side, hit the floor if you hear gunshots. Sounds like I didn't much like waycars. I didn't. Prefer the head end.

I remember an incident around that time, where a drunk engineer rear ended a stopped train, killing the crew in the caboose.  Don't know if that's the same incident or not.  In the old days some slang terms for the caboose were "glory  wagon" and "Hearse", suggesting they might not have been the safest places to be.  In defense of the caboose, in 1994 and 1996 runaway derailments on Cajon Pass possibly could have been prevented if a caboose were present one either of those trains.  Both were due to blockages in the brake line that a rear end crew could have applied emergency braking from the caboose.

Oldhead SF guys have told me how a caboose on the SUPER C hotshot was a scary place to be--it would literally float at times doing 79 mph+. The older brakeman always elected to ride on the power.

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CajonRat Wrote:
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> I remember an incident around that time, where a
> drunk engineer rear ended a stopped train, killing
> the crew in the caboose.  Don't know if that's
> the same incident or not.  In the old days some
> slang terms for the caboose were "glory  wagon"
> and "Hearse", suggesting they might not have been
> the safest places to be.  In defense of the
> caboose, in 1994 and 1996 runaway derailments on
> Cajon Pass possibly could have been prevented if
> a caboose were present one either of those
> trains.  Both were due to blockages in the brake
> line that a rear end crew could have applied
> emergency braking from the caboose.

Wasn't at least one of those accidents the reason for the use of the two-way telemetry device?

I watched an eastbound Southern Pacific train pull into Sparks, Nev. years ago for its crew change.  The bay window caboose came to a stop right across from where I was standing.  I don't remember anything unusual about the stop , but suddenly the slack ran in so hard the caboose slammed forward so hard the rear truck rose so far up on the center pin I thought the truck was going to end up under the middle of the car.  To my surprise the caboose came crashing back down on the pin and stopped.  I don't remember seeing any crewmen.

A retired SP operating officer once told me cabooses were the most dangerous piece of equipment on the railroad.

JBOmaha



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/17 14:35 by Copy19.

Forgot to mention -- the top of the hump conductor at Proviso who dropped the loads in on us (I had locked the track with him and got confirmation, by the way) was in flagrant violation of Rule G. He was known for it throughout the yard crews. Everybody knew to be extra careful in the hump yard when he was on duty. Still in all his drinking habit damn near killed us. Proviso. A dangerous place, indeed in the sixties and seventies.

mns019 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In a 43 year railroad career I had one caboose
> related injury, I burned two fingers in attempting
> to remove an alladin lamp chimney, to replace the
> mantle, and the chimney was still too hot.  
>
> Maybe a better question is how much safer were
> train operations with an occupied caboose?
>
> I always thought that in latter years slack action
> became a bigger problem, maybe sloppy train
> handling, maybe longer trains......

...maybe requiring engineers to use dynamic instead of air.

TAW

I don't remember the particulars, but I remember a story on a Kansas City TV station in the late 60s/early 70s about a RI trainmen who was killed when he was slammed against a bulkhead in a caboose. 

There was a post here on T/O many years ago on this subject.I dont recall if the study was done by the railroads ,or the FRA ,but the Caboose was flagged as the most(or one of the most) dangerous places to work on the railroad.It also stated that these factors were part of the reason the caboose disappeared from the railroad scene.
Regards,DK

I always have to laugh when I hear the "most dangerous place to work on a train" statistic people throw around because, well, duh. The only dangerous places to work on a train are the places occupied by crewmen. Nobody is riding on a covered hopper, or a bulkhead flat car, or a gondola. They are either in the cab or the caboose and, at that time, on freight trains, there was nothing more. So unless the cab and caboose were statistically equal as far as safety, which would be almost impossible, one HAD to be more statistically dangrous than the other, even if it was by a small margin.

What really matters is the risk versus reward in the total operational safety of the train and I doubt if the carriers ever studied that, or had any incentive to do so. They wanted to ditch the "expensive caboose" so they only published statistics that supported their objective. As mentioned above, how many times did a crewman plug a train from the rear when it was prudent? I'm sure 90+% of those incidents were never reported and the issue didn't rear its ugly head until cabooses were displaced with one-way EOTs, and all the death and carnage that resulted from that became too apparent.

So now cabooses are gone and, guess what? The "most dangerous place to work on a train" is the cab of the locomotive, where ALL the crewmen are now. But the carriers will get rid of those too in due time. And mark my words, they will claim exactly that, all in the name of "safety".

I think the real turning point for the ride quality in cabooses came when the EOCC (End Of Car Cushion device) came into vogue during the late 60's. On some trains the slack went from feet to hundreds of feet in a train and  the resulting run-ins and run-outs became pretty wild with a inexperianced engineer. It would be almost impossbile to ride under current train handling rules used by the class 1 railroads. When trains are pulling down to a signal where I live, the trains often sound like a giant heavy metal slinky with the slack bouncing back n forth.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

In the late 1950's and early 1960's my family had lots of relatives in north central North Dakota.  At that time, that area was the home of numerous Great Northern Railroad branch lines, almost all of which ran mixed trains.   Several times, rather than spend time as the only person younger than 55 or 60 at my uncle or aunts house, my dad would allow me to ride one of the mixed trains usually the ones which ran out of Rugby, ND.  I remember the first one that I rode.  There were about 100 empty 40 box cars for grain, when we started out, all of which would be dropped at various elevators going out, and they would pick up the loads on the way back.  The whole consist was trailed by a combine that probably dated from at least 1900.    The conductor gave a highball to the two GP7's on the head end using a WW2 Walkie Talkie, nodded at me and indicated that I should sit down and grab the back of the seat in front of me, as did he and the rear end brakeman.  I swear that when the slack ran out, we were jerked 10 feet before the wheels started to rotate.   All the rest of the trip, as soon as you heard a brake application or felt the slack run in, everyone did exactly the same thing, followed by a repeat when the conductor highballed the engineer.  Everyone who rode the train, and there were a surprising number of passengers who got on that morning to head for Bottineau followed the same exact procedure.  That day I got a full appreciation for what the caboose crews went through, although we were restricted to 25 mph, so I still cannot imagine what it would be like to ride behind 100 cars at 60 mph...

I am probably one of few people who have ridden the rear end of a freight train a long distance in the last few years.  My private railcar "TIOGA PASS", is frequently chartered to a European country to serve as the escort car on train loads of military equipment moving from the training base to an Atlantic port for shipment to Europe.  The rail journey is about 2400 miles.  The soldiers and security personnel who ride the whole way with me quickly learn to never be unbraced - that is always have a three point contact with the car - both feet and a hand on a railing.  While occasional slack action can be severe, no one has been hurt in the 13 trips I have made.  I understand that most railroads have instructed their enginemen to avoid the use of air brakes, preferring dynamic braking.  We have also now made several trips with DPU units toward the rear of the train.  I am not sure that DPU engines affect the slack action much, if at all.   Making soup in the galley?  Now that's tough!

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

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The inquiry about caboose safety referred to a Santa Fe incident at Pisgah, California, in July 1980, where a freight train was stopped to pick up some cars at a siding (Pisgah) about 40 miles East of Barstow.  A following train failed to slow or stop and collided with the rear end of the first train.  The conductor of the first train, Wilfred Ambrose, was killed in the collision.  Investigation disclosed that the head end crew of the following train spent the 4th of July partying along the Colorado River at Needles, and reported for duty under the influence of at least alcohol, and  ran their heavy train 125 miles in that condition prior to the accident.  This was only one of many happenings on American railroads which prompted major changes in the handling of employees suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol on duty.
I remeber this wreck well - I spent several nights at Pisgah during the cleanup of the wreckage.  It was real fun, what with 100 degree temperatures and rattlesnakes everywhere, and a huge fire that was roasting several carloads of cofeee.  The aroma was wonderful, the snake rattles not so good.

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar