Cabooses used for revenue passenger service?

  The Soo Line used cabooses for mixed train service up through the 70's in Northern Wisconsin.  Part of an agreement to allow track to be built through a reservation was to provide passenger service.  It lasted until the early 70's

  Many branches/short lines had mixed train service with specal combines/cabooses up into the 50's.

Jim

Perhaps not quite that for which you're searching, but the Kiski Junction Railroad uses cabooses (along with some coaches) for their tourist runs.  The same cars, as required, are used in-season when the road switches the Allegheny-Ludlum  Mill at Bagdad, PA., and they'll likely also be used when they start moving coal on the newly-constructed extension of the line.  The mill is switched only as required, so best to check ahead of time if you want to ride on one of those trips.

As others have mentioned, some mixed trains offered passenger service utilising the train's caboose rather than a coach or combine.

Wayne

There were drovers cabooses that were designed to carry animal handlers with livestock shipments.  These often looked like elongated cabooses with passenger seating.

Some railroads had cabooses that were essentially a combine with a cupola for mixed train operations.  I believe Burlington Northern still rostered a few of these as late as 1973.

I have heard of a few cases where railroads did allow revenue customers to ride in the caboose, but I don't remember the particulars at the moment.

Thanks for the info!  I'd been wondering how to realistically add passenger service to my small layout, and this sounds like a good way to do it..

In the late 1960's the B&O Railroad had ask to discontinue passenger traffic from Huntington, WV to Parkersburg, WV.  While they were allowed to stop running a passenger train, they still had to provide the service.  For about $12 (my memory is foggy) you could pay to ride a B&O Caboose from Huntington to Parkersburg (approx. 120 miles via rail, 100 miles by highway).  The train left the C&O Station in Huntington at 6:00 P.M, ran north on the WV side along the Ohio River, switching several industries... Goodyear at Apple Grove, Stauffer Chem near Pt. Pleasent and maybe Kaiser Aluminum near Ravenswood (I was asleep) and arrived at the lower yard at P'burg (by the flood wall) sometime after midnight.  I rode it just one time (dumb me!!!).  They let me throw switches, light end of the train flares and also take a nap on a bunk in the caboose.  It was an adventure!!!  Pardon my rambling.  I hope it gives you a viable example to answer your question.

My wife as a girl in the 1950s used to ride in the caboose along with her mom as paying passengers on a Santa Fe mixed train  between Hillsboro and McPherson, Kansas.  Sometimes, it would be hard to stop the train to spot the caboose exactly at the depot, so she says they woiuld have her get out, back the train up til the locomotive got to her, then she would ride the locomotive to carry her to the station. At least once, they carried her to her house on the loco.

At McPherson, the mother and girl had to take a taxi across town at night from the Santa Fe to the Rock Island station.  Then mom would stand in the middle of the track and wave a flag to stop the Rock Island passenger train to get to Hutchinson.

Sometimes the girl rode a Santa Fe passenger train from Hutchinson to Newton, and spent the night sleeping in the ladies' room of the depot.  In the morning, she rode on a mail truck home to Hillsboro.

This caboose is in revenue service.  Want to spend a night or more?  Check with the RR.

Cool scene. I may include something like it on my layout. Great idea.

Two options then. One. you can aquire a Drover's cab from either Roundhouse or Mantua (both nice models), but a good number of Mixed trains would actualt do away with the caboose. Instead, a desk for the Conductor would be tossed into the baggage section of whatever combine the railroad had on hand. It does need to have a smoke jack on top, as at the end of the train, the car would be stove-heated like a caboose was. 

Also, thankls for the info on the Kiski Jct. I have a firend to pass that along to, and I'vebeen wondering ig it would be protoypical fro a railroad to pull a caboose out of tourism and put it back into use as an actual caboose.  

The Louisville , New Albany & Corydon Railroad used a caboose for Passeger service after there wood combine caught fire sometime in the 1930's until early 1950's when The Southern Railway discontinued Passenger service out of Louisville .

The Virginia Blue Ridge RR (a shortline located north of Lynchburg and connecting with the Southern Ry at Tye River, VA) sold tickets for passenger service in the caboose until somewhere around the early 1970's.    Engine house was at Piney River, VA;  about 10 miles of track;  they ran SW1s when they dieselized.

Bill