Maybe you need to be of a certain age, or maybe it is as timeless as some of us surely believe, but there is something charming about an old-fashioned train caboose. You know, the kind with a raised section in the middle, a sort of mini-porch with a railing on each end, and a round smoke stack jutting up, and a ladder (usually) granting access to the roof.
Red may be preferred, but other colors work fine.
Maybe it was that distinctive finality of an otherwise endless train chugging by. You see the engine (or engines, if a particularly long diesel model) rolling by, almost mesmerizing if you stand close enough to feel the rolling thunder thrum through your chest, watching a string of box cars, hoppers, tankers whisk by, the Doppler effect of coming and going tickling your ears. You didn’t know when it would end, until that iconic bit of railroad history rolled by.
They are, by and large, a long-gone piece of railroad history, as beloved by buffs as they are forgotten by the companies that once used them. As Union Pacific put it on their “A Brief History of the Caboose” web page (up.com/heritage/history/caboose/index.htm), the classic caboose really was “A strange word for a strange railroad car that somehow survived for more than a hundred years, from the days of oil burning lamps into the computer age.”
The website notes a popular version of how the car got its name “dates the word back to a derivation of the Dutch word “kombuis,” which referred to a ship’s galley.” Prior to the introduction of the caboose, trainmen were housed, logically, in shanties built out of boxcars or onto flatcars. They housed the conductor and typically a brakeman and flagman before automatic air brakes. That little bit jutting up — the cupola — was added, according to lore, when a when a conductor discovered he could see his train much better with a seat allowing a view above the other cars. Trainmen could sit in it and watch for “smoke or other signs of trouble from overheated wheel journals (called hotboxes).”
We may wax nostalgic about the cars now, but some gave them derogatory nicknames including “crummy,” “doghouse,” “bone-breaker,” “snake wagon” and the depressingly descriptive “hearse.” They were office, bed bunk, observation deck and often kitchen all crammed into a small space at the tail of the rolling stock rattling behind the Iron Horse.
Technology may have made them obsolete, but clearly we still have a cultural yen for the distinctive bit of wheeled history. You can spot restored versions throughout our region and much of the nation, including in White Haven and Mountain Top. Occassionally they serve as small shops. A few people either actually have — or more likely want to — set one up as a guest house or personal retreat next to their home.
All of which came to mind with Tuesday’s story about the dedication of the Mountain Top Caboose prominently set up one what used to be a pretty drab, untended bit of land along State Route 309. “Someone made a joke at our meeting and said, “Well, let’s get a caboose!” Mountain Top Historical Society Vice President Steve McGinnis recalled from 2018. Four years later, the casual suggestion became a reality, thanks to a donation from the Reading Northern Railroad. Over time it got a fresh coat of paint and other restorations, along with a good sprucing up of the surrounding grounds.
On Monday, it also received official dedications to the late Frank and Adeline Orloski, who donated the land it sits on.
The original suggestion for the property may have been made in jest, but as Judge Richard Hughes noted during the dedication, “What has happened up here has changed the entrance to Mountain Top for everyone. It’s not a joke.”
Here’s hoping the caboose, once a fully functional finale to many trains, has a rich future as a gateway greeting to the Mountain Top Area.
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