I’ve been around long enough to have caboose memories. Am I really that old? I guess so. When I transferred to Amtrak after 10 years with Seaboard Coast Line, my former freight railroad, we still employed full crews of five persons — an engineer, fireman, and brakeman on the head, with a conductor, and flagman on the caboose. That was 1986 though — fully 30 years before my twin grandsons were born. Heck, their father, Ryan, now a senior Amtrak engineer, was only 2 years old. Time flies. Things change.
At least twice a month, my fellow retirees and I convene for coffee and lunch — enjoying our senior discounts, of course. Amazingly, the same people who were champing at the bit to pull the pin and enjoy their hard-earned Railroad Retirement checks reminisce for hours about our lives on the high iron.
I miss the caboose (the way car, hack, cabin car, or other civil references by which they were known, depending on railroad), while at the same time, I don’t.
On through freights, once the paperwork was taken care of, it was customary to climb up into the cupola, and put your feet up on the wall in front of you, to brace yourself for a constant bombardment of G-force punishment. The run-in and run-out of the slack between each car in the train, stung like the tip of a whip. The pain it inflicted was often enough to make grown men scream. It was one of the reasons I opted to relinquish my grip on the grab irons of a caboose in order to grasp a throttle and view the road ahead. Engineer were better paid, too.
On the other hand, back when cabooses were individually assigned, sometimes you could close your eyes and envision yourself seated in a neighborhood diner. Ah, the aroma of piping hot coffee and delicacies created from Spam, seared to perfection on the stove by an innovative conductor.
In later years, when caboose cars were pooled for long distance “run thru” service, they received cursory cleaning — enough to meet contractual minimums. No air conditioning, the heater either functioned poorly (or over-performed), and the stench was often intolerable.
There were “cab tracks,” in nearly every terminal where cabooses were stored and serviced between runs (in some cases, occupied by conductors to which they were assigned). With all of the different railroads that ran into the RF&P’s Potomac Yard, across the river from Washington, D.C., cabooses had to be sorted by owner.
One newly hired brakeman, learning under the tutelage of an experienced conductor, switching the cab storage tracks, was instructed to stand at the far end of the tracks to watch the cabs being kicked into them by the yard engine.
The young man did just as instructed.
Before long, the yardmaster screamed to the conductor, “Stop!” One of the cabs had rolled out the other end of the track, down the ladder, and damaged several switches.
The red faced conductor stormed up to the rookie brakeman. “I told you to watch the cabs we were kicking!”
“I did,” he replied. “I watched them, like you told me. Something wrong?”
Read more from Amtrak Engineer Doug Riddell here.
