1) Updated locations on the Periodically Updated Oregon Caboose Locations List list with links that have online confirmations of locations.
2) Created a Google map of known locations: Oregon Caboose Locations Google Map
3) Created a free web page: The Oregon Captive Caboose List which links to different Oregon caboose history or resources.
4) Confirmed that the two caboose formerly on the siding in Springfield Oregon are now gone. I had previously photographed them but they have been moved to who knows where.
5) 7/23 Added a new caboose in Coos Bay to list and Oregon Caboose Locations Google Map. The Oregon Coast Digest has a few photos of the delivery online. An article in The World identifies the the caboose as Burlington Northern Caboose No. 11269 and indicates it was formerly a AT&SF Caboose.
According to the story it was built in 1948 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, but another site associated with the FRIENDS OF THE BURLINGTON NORTHERN RAILROAD indicates it was formerly SP&S number 853.
The Burlington Northern Cabooses list
News Story by By Alex Powers, Staff Writer for The World. (online story includes one photo)
"New end in sight
By Alex Powers, Staff Writer
Thursday, June 25, 2009 Caboose is latest addition for Coos Bay railway museum
Most conductors would be satisfied with one caboose at the end of their train. Oregon Coast Historical Railway boss Dick Jamesgard wants three.
For now, the association president is pleased to have two. His museum's latest acquisition is a wooden caboose covered in the cracked green paint of the long-since assimilated Burlington Northern.
Oregon Coast Historical Railway bought it for $4,000 from the family of the late George Ackerman, a private collector. Trucking it in from Hood River cost another $7,500, and renovation will cost an additional $5,000.
Jamesgard is optimistic.
"I think it's a pretty good find," he said. "It was worth more in scrap than what we got it for."
Fair market value is closer to $12,000, Jamesgard said, and the association received $10,000 in grants from the Kinsman Foundation in Milwaukee and Floyd Ingram Trust in Myrtle Point for the purchase. The historical railway also received multiple private donations.
"People like cabooses, children like cabooses," Jamesgard said.
He explained that cabooses are central to folklore about derailings or fires, though the museum's recently acquired caboose probably never saw such crises.
Caboose No. 11269 was built in 1948 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and used on freight trains in Washington and Idaho, Jamesgard said.
At that time, the caboose was used as an infirmary, fire hall, sleeping quarters and office for a train's crew and conductor.
"We thought the engine was the center of the train. It was the caboose," Jamesgard said.
But as communication and railroad technologies improved, the importance of the caboose dwindled. Oregon Coast Historical Railway's caboose was retired in the mid-1970s and wound up in a Hood River field.
Now No. 11269 sits behind the museum's first caboose in Coos Bay. Jamesgard eventually would like to install the caboose on an "inner-city excursion" train, but first he'll focus on restoring the caboose with era-appropriate lanterns, stoves and other fixtures.
Even without the excursion line, Jamesgard said the museum's expanded collection will offer visitors first-hand perspective on trains - a one-time major component of northwest industry.
"If we garbage can things, what are our kids going to see? That's what a museum is for," he said.
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