Nostalgia & History > Caboose Shortages

I think it has been well documented that throughout the history of railroads leading upto today, there have been motive power shortages at times which resulted in delaying trains in yards until power was available. Did the problem of holding trains ever occur because there was a shortage of cabooses?

On the (real) UP at East Yard in L.A., we would hold trains all the time for cabooses. In the late '70's I was working the daylight "C" yard lead job which as one of it's regular routines was to gather up cabooses from around the yard and take them to the caboose track.There were many times we would grab a cab off an inbound train, take it to the cab track and wait for the carmen and cleaners to do their thing, then take the cab out to a waiting train.-BMT

On the B&O, they had cabooses assigned to the road crew as stipulated in the 1947 agreement. It was like having your own personal RV.

Chronic caboose shortages caused many railroads to rebuild old boxcars into cabooses. WP, SN, and TS were using some of theirs into the '70's. In a pinch, SP was known to substitute a passenger car for a caboose.