This Cotton Belt long caboose will be on the road this week from Old Saybrook, CT. Mr. Gary Powell has bought his third caboose and is having it shipped to Cedar Park, TEXAS and the Austin Steam Train Association Shops where it will be restored.
The 2305 arrived safely at ASTA on Saturday morning. It was placed on cribbing and awaits retrucking. After the car is trucked the next task will be to reinstall the cupola, which was removed prior to the move for clearance.
Looks almost like a drover's car. Nice find!!!
What's the story behind this design? It looks like a very old passenger or combine car with a cupola added. Or was it designed to carry passengers on lines where they were required to furnish the service, but traffic was very light? I've never seen anything like it.
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Long cabooses similar to the SSW design were used on mixed trains. I would doubt that the passenger capacity was much of a limitation on ridership.
Cotton Belt #2304, the only other surviving car of this class, is preserved at Ashdown, Arkansas. See http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1362650 for a photo.
The Cotton Belt long cabooses were used in local mixed train service. There is photographic evidence of 2303 on the Gatesville Local. Steve Patterson wrote about the Cotton Belt in the Missouri Bootheel in a 1962 Trains article. His article shows the 2304 in service there. There are conductor's time books in the Commerce Public Library that document the 2301 in service on the Sherman Branch is TEXAS. And if the conductor sold more than one ticket that was a lot of fares!
Ed in Kentucky
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