DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN RAILROAD
|
|
DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN RAILROAD
|
|
| Listen Here |
During its working years, this caboose could be seen bringing up the rear of freight trains in Colorado and Utah.
It was built for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in June 1966, and carried the train's conductor and rear brakeman. It has side extensions on the cupola so the crew could see around taller freight cars in the train. The crew would continually be on the lookout for load shifting, damage to equipment and cargo, and overheating wheel bearings on the steep mountain grades of the Colorado Rockies.
This car served until the end of the caboose era in 1984. It was stored in Colorado, then was displayed at a hobby shop in Arizona. In 2005 it was purchased by a private owner who brought it to the Arizona Railway Museum in 2007 for safekeeping and restoration.
This caboose was built by the International Car Division of PACCAR as part of an order of 25 "wide-vision" center-cupola cabooses (15 in 1966, 10 more in 1976). In the 1980s, all D&RGW cabooses had their side windows blanked over with steel plates in response to a Federal Railroad Administration safety ruling.
After their retirement, Rio Grande cabooses 01505 and 01433 were purchased from the scrap yard by Dan Quiat for his Royal Gorge Industries (reporting mark RGEX) in Strasburg, Colorado, with the intent of restoring them and using them as museum displays.
But then they were sold in 2001 to a hobby shop owner in Arizona City, Arizona, and were trucked to his store and put on display in front of the building. When the shop closed in 2005, caboose 01505 was purchased by a private owner who stored it in Casa Grande temporarily, then had it trucked to the Arizona Railway Museum's Tumbleweed Park location in 2007 to protect it from vandalism. The owner of caboose 01505, member Jan Barham-Callahan, passed away in October 2022 and the estate donated it to the museum. The other caboose, number 01433, was an end-cupola, non-wide-vision model. That one was moved to the Gadsden-Pacific Division Toy Train Operating Museum in Tucson.
Cabooses were largely replaced in the 1980s by sensors placed along the tracks and end-of-train devices. These devices monitored the braking system and the integrity of the train using advanced technology, allowing the conductor and brakeman to now ride at the front of the train.
|
|
3/10/2007 - View of D&RGW caboose 01505 as is was delivered to Tumbleweed Park. |
 |
3/10/2007 - View of the caboose as it was delivered to Tumbleweed Park. |
E-mail the Museum Webmaster.