Re: Silverton Northern Caboose Update and Move

A few stray pieces of brake rigging were still attached, but our real source of information came from the original D&RG drawings for this car and the redrawn plans that Paul Luning and his group did at the Colorado Railroad Museum when they rebuilt sister caboose 49. The original wood brake beams were replaced on the 49 with slightly more modern brake beams from D&RGW freight cars, and we picked through your photos to see what was available and used the photos as a guide. It looks like this car never had air brakes applied or regular knuckle couplers. So we will restore it to the link and pin version and that is also what was described in the historic structures assessment the D&S performed on this car. If at some later point in time we hook it on the back of the local bullet train to Howardsville, we'll perform the necessary brake and coupler upgrades. But the contract our historical society has with CHS specifies the link and pin era for this car.

John Braun has already sent all the castings out for sand blasting to clean them up, then he has the task of doing some work to get the journal boxes fitted properly to the pedestals. The pedestals all have at least one crack in the iron and show considerable wear. So, he has his work cut out. He also worked on the C&S 1006 so has prior experience on 4-wheel cabooses.

The wood for the siding has been ordered, and we have a new molding knife being made for the siding. This car did not have typical V groove car siding, but had an interesting profile that had more of a U shaped channel milled into the edge of each piece that created the visual effect of the V groove siding. The D&RGW RPO the Sumpter Valley has is sided with the exact same pattern that indicates that RPO has its original siding.

Fritz