Caboose No. 6 is one of 25
identical
cars built in 1949 by the skilled workers at the Missouri-Kansas-Texas
Railroad (MKT) shops in Denison, Texas. The photo below shows the
car at the Gulf Coast Railroad Museum.
In the picture above, No. 6 is seen bringing up the markers
on a Gulf
Coast Railroad Museum excursion on the Moscow, Camden & San
Augustine
Railroad, an East Texas short line. Below, No. 6 in service on
the
MKT in the Katy's 1960s era red paint scheme. (Photo below
courtesy
of Max Miller.)
Originally numbered 1014 and painted “Sloan Yellow,” No. 6,
a typical
cupola caboose, saw service on all MKT lines in the Southwest United
States.
Before the age of computers, the caboose served as the “office” of a
freight
train, where the conductor handled the paper work related to the
train’s
operation and the brakeman watched over the train as it traveled along
the railroad.
At an unknown time, the car was overhauled, painted in MKT’s
overall
red paint scheme and renumbered 6. During much of the mid-1980s,
No. 6 worked in Oklahoma, but in 1988, the victim of spray paint
can-wielding
vandals, No. 6 was repainted and reassigned to Houston. The car
worked
regularly between Houston and Galveston on a freight train known by
railroaders
as the “Salty.” The caboose is seen in that service in the photo
below, which was taken by Gary Morris.
No. 6 is believed to have been the last standard cupola
caboose in service
on the MKT. The MKT was merged into the Union Pacific Railroad in
late 1988. During the winter of 1988-1989, No. 6 was stored as it
lacked a heater to keep the crew warm (the car originally had a
coal-fired
stove; the stove currently displayed in the car was purchased by the
museum
after No. 6’s acquisition).
The car never returned to regular railroad service, its
retirement brought
on by the changing needs of modern railroading. Union Pacific
declared
the car surplus and donated No. 6 to the Gulf Coast Railroad Museum in
May 1989.
Below, museum members inspect No. 6 at MKT's Eureka Yard in
Houston
soon after the car was donated by Union Pacific. The caboose was
dispatched from Eureka Yard, much of which is now abandoned, for its
last
in-service runs.
In late 2007 and early 2008, with funding from
a grant by Houston Endowment, No. 6 and sister museum car SP No.
4696 were shipped to Arkansas for cosmetic restoration by Cherokee
Mobile Services. The cars are seen below passing through Little Rock on
a rainy fall day in this photo by Ken Ziegenbein.
In the photo above, taken by Jim
Elgin of Cherokee Mobile Services, cosmetic restoration of No. 6 is
almost complete, while
SP No. 4696 waits in the background in primer.
The freshly painted No. 6 and No. 4696 returned to Houston in late
April 2008. The cars are seen below being delivered by Union Pacific
from Houston's Englewood Yard in these photos by Tom Marsh.
Above, the cars have departed
Englewood on the UP local headed to Railwood. Two below, pushing back
onto the Railwood Industrial Park lead.
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