At the Illinois Railway Museum (IRM) in Union, Illinois, you can explore, walk through, and ride in multiple forms of the caboose that were created. ❤ The crew and volunteers have lovingly restored and maintained this classic innovation of the American railroad. On special event days, you can board your choice of four different caboose styles and take a ride along their excellent stretch of tracks. 👍 There are freight train tracks about 1.5 miles from our house. As kids, if ours was the first car stopped by the gates, we would climb into the front seat of our AMC Rambler and look down the line to sight the caboose. 😮

Excellent video. Fascinating history, worked 44 years with and without cabooses. Technology is a bear, but instead of trying to fight it, we got smart  and contractually accepted it. But let's stop trying to reduce the crews even more by the technology. 44 year retired CSX conductor.

Oh, I think almost all of us must remember when the caboose disappeared.  It was jarring, like a sentence without a period at the end.

In the early 1960's I lived in Atlanta Ga and attended a boarding school in Tennessee. I rode the L&N railroad between Atlanta and Nashville 4 times each year. A law required the railroad to provide passenger service, but having a passenger train on that route wouldn't have been profitable, so the railroad just stuck a passenger car on the end a freight train instead of a caboose. A train ticket was the same fare as a bus ticket, and the train was just as fast or faster, a heck of a lot more comfortable, and passenger car was never more than 3/4 full even during the Christmas-New Years holiday break.
BTW: I started traveling to and from boarding school and to visit distant relatives by myself when I was ten (1961), and nobody ever batted an eye or asked me any questions when I walked into a bus station or train station and bought a ticket for some distant city. That's just the way it was back then. Now most 10 year olds aren't allowed to walk 4 blocks to visit a friend...😠

You could smell  Hot Boxes and sticking Brakes. (hot wheels)   Also, the difference between them.
Retired Conductor/Brakeman in 2000 with  32 years of service.

My mom got to ride in one every time the family went to California. Grandfather was maintenance away for Santa Fe in Cleburne Texas,  only way they got to the depo in Ft Worth was a caboose ride. She has some cool insight to caboose rides.

Well done and very, very informational.  Thanks for sharing and the best of luck!

Another thing Fred can't do is see people stealing from the boxcars and car carriers when it slows down. This is where high-theft areas are.

My Was an Engineer on N&W and he left early 70s Goddess all those men....

Excellent photography pictures enabling viewer's to better understand what the orator is describing 😉. Had good fortune to tour several cabooses years ago 🤗

As a ten year old(1957) I was in love with trains. The conductor of a local way freight would let me ride in the van (Canadian for caboose) but not before he flipped the pin up girl calendar over.

Great vid, thanks! I've always been a railfan and like to watch the trains roll by, they definitely lost something when they ditched the classic caboose.

Miss the caboose. They are part of RR history. Technology is part of life.
There is a caboose setting on rails with ballast in the yard near a home not far from me. It's well taken care of and neat to see when driving by.

We notice a caboose, daily. There is a home that has a caboose on the property used as a guest house. And once in a great while, we notice CSX, has a caboose at the end.

Among trainman “Fred” did not stand for “flashing rear end device,” we actually called it f ing rear end device.

No Caboose cost the Palentine Disaster ! 😮

@Golden age Lost: My name is Pat Richardson A railfan and singer songwriter performing musician for 65 years. In the 80's as the "'brass wagons"' were being excised from the "'company string"" I composed a farewell to the caboose and the men who with heart and brawn put the trains through. The song is entitled ''THE MAN AT THE END OF THE TRAIN"" I am posting here to request your permission to post a link  to that song for your viewer's pleasure added to your report here. Rather than poach your site I believe it would be a handsome addition to your well done effort here. I await your reply.

One thing lost is the ability to inform a train crew of a potential problem while it passes. One evening my family was picnicing beside the CPR mainline through Toronto and as a train went by I smelled and saw smoke about 30 cars behind the loco. Happily when the van showed up about 50+ cars later I was able to yell to the brakeman, who was in the open window of the cupola. We heard on our radio scanner that they'd stopped and found a hand brake set. Who knows what kind of damage might have incurred.

I once knew a lady whose father was a conductor on the Ontario & Western Railroad in New York State.  Like most all conductors during the days of the caboose, her father had his own assigned caboose that he alone used.  Her father, being a family man, took his vacation time in one chunk in the  summer.  The family would load up his caboose with everything they needed for the summer, then the railroad would transport them to their desired holiday spot, and they spent the summer living from the caboose as their summer cabin.

Those are all the true facts that I know; I wish I knew more of the actual details.  Such as, was their chosen vacation spot the same every year; were they limited to only home rails for where they could go; was the caboose rolled off the end of the line somewhere or did they occupy an un-used siding; were there other railroad vacationers there too?

At this point, I am guessing, but I have to assume that part of the compensation for being able to use the caboose for vacation required the family to  do maintenance and repair on it -- whatever was needed such as replacement boards, clean the coal stove, repair the roof and windows as needed, painting, etc. Likely responsible for everything except the couplers and the rolling trucks.

The Railroad is all about saving money. But that Railroad disaster in East Palestine, Ohio back in 2023 shows exactly why a Caboose is necessary. That disaster was pure neglect on the Railroad and shows how little they care about people's safety. Stringent guidelines for checking Bearings is definitely being ignored because of there greed and manpower shortages. The Toxic chemicals being hauled on these trains require more oversight from the government and the Railroads lack of maintenance.