Railroaders' Nostalgia > When we lost our cabooses . . .

.   .   .   sometime in the mid eighties almost every road switcher in the Los Angeles area lost their cabooses to an agreement with all the jobs getting two additional seats along the electrical cabinet so a minimum of five people in the cab would have a seat making for a very cramped cab. As seen above UP added an aluminum cabinet to the front of former MP GP's being used on LA area Locals on the outside to store "stuff". Santa Fe did not. Each job dealt with the situation in their own way. The Third Pico Rivera Road Switcher put beach and lounge chairs in a clump of small trees along the Zerox Lead in Norwalk where they spent their "spot" time in good weather. The Second Fullerton Road Switcher separated a Rail Box at the end of a stub track in Kimberly Clark yard where box cars were cleaned prior to loading with KC products. They put steps up to the door and a couch and chairs inside for their "spot" time. The First Fullerton spent lots of time in the break rooms of various industries served. These were just a few of the jobs that had to make do with the changing world of railroading. Eventually most of these jobs began using double units and with reduced crews there was plenty of room for all. Funny, in the OLD days jobs that handled thirty forty fifty cars a day used a single CF7 with caboose then later when jobs handled less than half that amount every job in LA had a pair of units? Go figure.
JB

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 Although the MoPac was quite dominent in the Chicago area, I've never seen a unit with that silver box! Any idea how many units received that treatment? Thanks for sharing the photo!

UP did an experiment with 1 SD40-2 by removing the toilet from the nose and adding it to a small room near the rear of the unit. Used the nose for grip storage but that idea didnt last long either.
JC

Posted from Android

Very interesting.  Thanks.

ghemr Wrote:
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>  Although the MoPac was quite dominent in the
> Chicago area, I've never seen a unit with that
> silver box! Any idea how many units received that
> treatment? Thanks for sharing the photo!

They were a locally fabricated bolt-on unit. Ment to be easily installed and removed.

Former-WP GP35s got the silver box as well.

UP 3794. I have a pic.

JasonCNW Wrote:
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> UP did an experiment with 1 SD40-2 by removing the
> toilet from the nose and adding it to a small room
> near the rear of the unit. Used the nose for grip
> storage but that idea didnt last long either.
> JC
>
> Posted from Android

Thanks for posting.I was not aware of those mitigations related to the loss of the caboose.Makes me wonder where I was during this time.Bill Webb