Model Railroading > Transfer caboose

Hi all,

please would you explain to a greenhorn:

what is a Transfer Caboose?

Thanks

Erwin from Austria

A transfer caboose was a car that was mostly used in large cities such as Chicago. The caboose was not fully furnished such as a road caboose, which would have had bunks for crews to sleep in as well as toilet facilities. It would be used for trains (transfer jobs) that deliver interchange traffic between different railroad yards. This caboose was also used regularly on jobs that serve industries or in areas where lenghty back-up moves existed---again, such as Chicago.......

http://www.hebners.net/caboose/atsf/atsf999076.jpg normal caboose, or "waycar" as the atsf called them

http://www.greenbayroute.com/caboose102.jpg transfer caboose

On many, if not most, roads, a transfer caboose was usually an elderly road caboose, simply downgraded due to its age. On the Q in the 1960's, steel cabooses had displaced their older wooden cars, which then got relegated to transfer service. Most of these antiques still had wood beam trucks! They rode better than anything, but if I were ever in a 60 mph wreck - the steel cars would have been much preferred. Those Q cars were unchanged from the way they'd been built: wooden bodies and frames (truss rods), wood beam trucks, coal stoves, tinplate water coolers, kero lighting, original interior layout with bunks.

Other roads built cars specifically for transfer, as described in previous post.

GN rebuilt old steel cars for transfer service, fitted as per the previous post.

Milwaukee, OTOH, built new steek "rib sided" cars during the late 30's and 40's, identical to the road cabooses they were building - except fot the trucks. The road cars had better riding trucks.

Rock Island had some transfer cabooses in Chicago (Blue Island, I believe) that were rebuilt from old boxcars. The only changes they made to the boxcars were to fill in the sidedoor with a wooden false wall, that also had a two foot wide door for access. Don't know what they did to the accomodate the interior. There were no end platforms. No coopola either - just a pair of "park bench's" (sorry, no seatbelts) bolted to the center of the roof!

You have a LOT of lattitude in modelling transfer cabooses.

-LD

Here is a former Rock Island transfer caboose at the Illinois Railway Museum.

http://www.irm.org/gallery/CRIP19135-RESTORATION?page=1

Jim

Just one point to add to the already good descriptions above. Transfer cabooses could be used in places much smaller than Chicago. I can remember seeing a Milwaukee road transfer caboose used in Des Moines Iowa in the 1970s.

Stephen

Tank you folks, very helpful and nice pis´s, especially this RI.

Erwin from Austria

There's a couple of model kits out there, I think American laserkits (??) and also Wright Trak (??). I'll try to dig up a couple of links when I'm off the clock. Interesting designs but just not on my list, yet.

American Model Builders has a couple of transfer cabeese, or at least as used by the prototypes:
http://www.laserkit.com/laserkit.htm

Wright Trak has a classic NYC kit:
http://www.wrighttrak.com/page3.php?view=productPage&product=12&category=2

The Trainfest thread shows a new entry by Bluford Shops:
http://www.bluford-shops.com/bluford_93_007.htm
apparently this is developing while this thread has been active.

There had been a version of the MoPac shorty caboose marketed by RailYard but they have moved on to other projects and are no longer on the retail market.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/12 21:02 by TCnR.

Oh, yeah. I failed to mention the "S**t-house on a raft" designs.

Many railroads besides the Rock used these in the 1950-80 era. Milwaukee built some on the frames of scrapped tenders, though they were not used in the Twin Cities. I never saw one - I believe they were used in Milwaukee and Chicago. GN used some in Minneapolis, built on the cast steel frames and trucks of scrapped Baldwin VO-1000 switchers. I saw 'em often, but never rode one; I know the crews hated them because they were hard on hemaroids.

-LD

AustralianTerrier Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is a former Rock Island transfer caboose at
> the Illinois Railway Museum.
>
> http://www.irm.org/gallery/CRIP19135-RESTORATION?p
> age=1
>
> Jim

New York Central and Penn Central's look like a shortened section of a box car on a flat car. They did see some service on branch line locals and MOW trains too.

wabash2800 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> New York Central and Penn Central's look like a
> shortened section of a box car on a flat car.

Yep, the original NYC N6A transfer cabooses were built from old boxcars. Later in the program the entire car was built from scratch....

http://www.hebners.net/cr/crN6A.html

Here's a C&NW home-built transfer caboose I posted awhile back...

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/attachments/fullsize/309000/cnw_12503_081182_01.jpg

TCnR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> The Trainfest thread shows a new entry by Bluford
> Shops:
> http://www.bluford-shops.com/bluford_93_007.htm
> apparently this is developing while this thread
> has been active.
>
> There had been a version of the MoPac shorty
> caboose marketed by RailYard but they have moved
> on to other projects and are no longer on the
> retail market.

That MoPac caboose was NOT a transfer caboose. It was designed and built for road use. It was just a shorter body bay window caboose. The UP CA-11 class of caboose was similar and also designed and built as a road caboose.

Moloco did an HO model kit = now OOP I think - they turn up ossasionally on Ebay

It's a nice kit--a Frisco car IIRC?

shortliner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Moloco did an HO model kit = now OOP I think -
> they turn up ossasionally on Ebay

Oops, of course not, sorry for the confusion.
Blame it on multi-tasking. Nice looking caboose though.
>
> That MoPac caboose was NOT a transfer caboose. It
> was designed and built for road use. It was just a
> shorter body bay window caboose. The UP CA-11
> class of caboose was similar and also designed and
> built as a road caboose.

imrl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That MoPac caboose was NOT a transfer caboose. It
> was designed and built for road use. It was just a
> shorter body bay window caboose. The UP CA-11
> class of caboose was similar and also designed and
> built as a road caboose.

Same thing with the L&N / CRR / SBD / CSXT cabooses. They were built for and used in road service.

Dave



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/12 11:44 by drolsen.

I was thinking of the ones that say 'transfer caboose' in the kit description. There are a lot of other cabeese in the links.

imrl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TCnR Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> > The Trainfest thread shows a new entry by
> Bluford
> > Shops:
> > http://www.bluford-shops.com/bluford_93_007.htm
> > apparently this is developing while this thread
> > has been active.

While chit-chatting with a representative of Bluford Shops at Trainfest (Milwaukee) this afternoon he clearly stated that his Family Lines (L&N, CRR, SBD) version of a caboose will be based on the Mopac car. In other words all the details such as railings, fuel tanks, etc. will be Mopac----the roofs will be interchangeable to meet the respective road's design, i.e. short roof, long roof , smooth, paneled, etc. As a CSX modeler we are at least a little closer to the Family Lines version but would still have to modify the railings, fuel tanks, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/12 20:54 by CSX_ENG.

CSX_ENG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As a CSX modeler we are at least a little
> closer to the Family Lines version but
> would still have to modify the railings,
> fuel tanks, etc.

Thanks for the info - I can definitely work with that. The big challenge with modifying the Railyard model would have been filling things like the small notch in the side sill (to clear the axle-mounted generator) on a resin model. I'm more confident in my ability to make those kinds of changes on a styrene model.

Dave