Re: West Side Lumber Caboose #4/6 - The Early Years

Mal,

I plan on doing that eventually, but the museum has formal copy and publishing restrictions on theses photos for these uses. I began an article on the cabooses after this material became available and plan on getting the proper permissions from the museum when it is to be published. I don't want to jeopardize that with any internet publishing.

All of the first five numbered cabooses were flat car based and while the cabins bare similarities, they are each unique in window arrangements and other details. (There were several earlier "cabooses" that were actually just shacks on flats that are generally categorized by descriptions.) These pre-40 cabooses are completely different from the later purposely built cabooses, except for the second #5 (first #3) which remained on a flat. I'm still not sure exactly when the cabooses generally became numbered, as the early cabooses were not except for occasional original flat car numbering. However, they all seem to be numbered after the 1935 start up, though they surely were individually recognized earlier by the shops before actually being numbered by paint.

Tim McCartney