Chessie System Caboose

Chessie System Caboose. . , . Built by Fruit Growers Express in Alexandria, Va., June 1980. , . Weight 177,000 lbs. Size 41'8"L x 10'8"W. , . Constructed as C&O caboose 904144. , . 1986 C&O became CSX Transportation; renumbered as 900066. , . Painted blue-gray by CSX in Huntington, WV, August 2002. , . Last used at Richmond's Acca Yard. , . Ordered to be scrapped for a brake defect, January 2018. , . Donated to Lee Hall Train Station Foundation, July 2018. , . Restored through donations and by volunteers. , . Placed on display at Lee Hall Depot, 2021., This bay window style of caboose, known as the C27A class, was equipped with a toilet, sink, stove, ice box, tool rack, lockers, sleeping bunks and several crew seats., The Chessie system ordered 160 C27A cabs: 94 for the Baltimore and Ohio and 66 for the Chesapeake and Ohio. This caboose was used on coal trains coming to the piers of Newport News with ore from West Virginia and Kentucky Mines., What is a caboose?, The last care on a train, often painted red, where the crew rode to monitor safety conditions. If a problem arise, they could stop the train. Cabooses usually had a cupola on top where the crew sat to look over the top of the consist. A later offset bay window design allowed crew to view the length of the train with an unobstructed view. The caboose was also a motel on wheels, where the crew ate, slept, and the conductor did paperwork., By 1980 most railroads were doing away with the caboose, but the C&O Railway could not because Virginia had a 1911 law that mandated railroads in the commonwealth must use one. With repeal of the law in 1988, cabooses were replaced with an end of train device that was used to communicate brake data to the locomotive. As a result, the once ubitiquious car is now an endangered piece of rail history.