John finished printing out all of the pages and copies needed for our
formal application to San Jose city planning to move our WP668 caboose
into our backyard and hook it up to utilities. The application materials
he developed are printed on very large sheets of paper (24″ x 36″) and
include maps, satellite views, street photos, site diagrams, blueprints,
descriptions of what is there now and what is proposed, etc. The whole
package required by the city comes out to 350 square feet of paper. This is
more than twice the floor size of my office here at Sun.
John is scheduled to present it downtown on Halloween, next week. Then,
we go through a formal hearing process.
We were going to present the application this week but we ran into scheduling
conflicts, including getting ready for my father’s 80th birthday party this
weekend.
When I tell people about our caboose project, those from outside of the US
often ask What’s a Caboose?. Check out
Wikipedia for a full
description but basically, a caboose is a manned railroad transport vehicle
at the end of a freight train.
Our caboose, WP668 (meaning number 668 caboose from the WP or Western
Pacific Feather River Railway line), was built by Pullman in 1916 as a boxcar,
converted to caboose service during World War II (1943), and retired in
1977. She was acquired by the
Golden Gate Railroad Museum (GGRM) in San Francisco, and finally sold to us
earlier this year. Here is the picture of WP668 from the GGRM web site:
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