Hello guys, hope everyone is well and enjoying your layouts....I am one that loves cabooses. I have bunches already and am always looking for more lol....Which brings me to my question. On my layout i want to add a caboose track to my engine service facility/yard and roundhouse complex. I have looked at many sources on the internet for pictures and information but i am still confused. Can or did most railroads of the past have more than one caboose tracks? Can anyone show me a picture of how a typical caboose track or tracks woul dbe located in a facility like im trying to model described above? Thanks everyone for your help!
I read that cabeese were often stored on a runaround track so the conductors particular caboose could be retrieved from either end. So I just added another runaround track in the yard. In the pic, you can see one caboose on it but usually, there is three or four.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Trainman2435, it looks like you may be a Chessie System follower. The "Chesapeake and Ohio Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment" by David H. Hickcox, Morning Sun Books, ISBN 1-878887-92-0, has a number of color pictures of C&O caboose tracks with numerous cars present on pages 106 (Parsons Yard, Columbus OH), 107 (Rainelle WV), 112 (Danville WV), 118 an elevated view of Parsons Yard, Columbus OH, also p.118, Grand Rapids, MI.
Most of these caboose tracks seem to be located closer to the yard throats/ladders than engine terminals.
If you have Andy Sperandeo's Kalmbach book on freight yards he gets into this a little bit, and comments on the caboose tracks in yards on some well known model railroads as well. Remember that the caboose would be just about the first thing removed from an incoming arrival at a yard by a switcher, so that the rest of the train could be broken down and yarded/classified. That might suggest a location right there.
Dave Nelson
Caboose tracks, when they were assigned to a conductor, worked like the crews did. First In-First Out.
To describe that, say a westbound pulls into the yard. The caboose is on the east end of the train and yard. A switcher pulls it off the rear and places it on the proper caboose track, on top of any other cabooses already there. (The crew gets placed on the call board, a chalk board that lists the crews in order. When a crew goes out, they get erased and the next crew becomes "first out.") While the crew works towards the top of the board, the caboose works it's way down the caboose track.
When an eastbound train is ready, the crew as worked up to first out on the board, the caboose has worked it's way towards the west end of the yard. A switcher pulls the first out caboose and places it on the eastbound train.
An intermediate terminal would have a separate caboose track for crews working on either district coming into the yard. Terminals handling crews working on multiple districts, say at a junction point may have multiple caboose tracks.
Beginning back in the late 1950s, railroads started getting labor agreements that allowed "pooling" of cabooses. No more were cabooses assigned to a particular crew or conductor. Rather when a caboose was needed, the first available and serviced caboose could be used. The crews no longer slept in the caboose at the AFHT, but were provided either lodging or an allowance towards lodging.
Jeff
My yard is maybe a bit overly complicated, but I was applying things from Andy's yard book. I have the ladder, then another track parallel to that for the caboose track, and finally a third track also parallel to the ladder which alows locos to get to/fromt he service area without getting int he way of the switcher working the yard. There is a second connection from the A/D tracks to the main as well, so a train can enter/leave the yard without impacting the switcher.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Caboose tracks would be near the yard, not necessarily near the engine facility. There was often a caboose track on either end of the yard. The tracks were double ended so a engine from either end of the yard could get a caboose. In the days of assigned cabooses an eastward train would come into the yard, the west end switcher would switch it and then then the conductor would go back out the east end switcher would grab the caboose and put it on the east end of a westward train for him to go back home.
Normally a caboose track would have supplies for water, ice, fuel oil (for the stove), knuckles, air hoses and paperwork packets. Where I worked, a clerk or laborer would sweep out the cabooses.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusmanNormally a caboose track would have supplies for water, ice, fuel oil (for the stove), knuckles, air hoses and paperwork packets. Where I worked, a clerk or laborer would sweep out the cabooses.
I didn't think of this and it will enable more details to be added to that area of the layout.
In Roanoke,Va., the N&W had two cab tracks at Shaffer's Crossing. The Radford Div. cab track was located off of the Motive Power ladder. The Norfolk and Shenandoah Div. cab track was located near the hump close to the old icing platform.
.
Hi,
In Cleveland, 1974, cabooses mingled with the power:
B&O_W3readytrack by Edmund, on Flickr
In the days before pooling of cabooses and train crews slept on their caboose they were generally farther away from the activity of the locomotive ready tracks.
I have way more cabooses than I need, I like them too I put two stub-end caboose tracks next to a yard office/crew room at one end of my yard.
caboose track by Edmund, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
On the PRR at the Enola yard near Harrisbug 2 or 3 cabin cars (cabeese) were placed on a ramp track called the pimple. When the end of the train was stopped clear of the pimple the crew would release the handbrakes and roll into the train for coupling. Hard to replicate on a model railroad