During the Thanksgiving holiday, between cooking and coming down with colds,
we worked on WP668, our backyard caboose. We added bits of wood trim, pulled
wires and installed conduit, outlets, and switches for the new electrical
system, and continued painting. I have three colors of paint: red primer
for metal bits, rust-red base color, and safety-yellow trim. Each day, I made
a round with each color, painting newly-cut bolt ends, dings and splats, new welds and
wood trim, and putting a third coat of yellow on each of the thirty or so handle bars.
We also placed the final order for the stencils to re-mark WP668. After negotiation
with the stencil cutting company, we settled on Trade Gothic Bold as the
currently-available font closest to the original WP668 letter forms. Our new
reusable stencils have now been laser cut on durable poly film and shipped and we
are waiting for them to arrive. We ordered the following:
- WP (12″ tall – for the bay centers)
- 668 (10″ tall – for the bay centers)
- LT WT 47700 (3″ tall – for the lower rims)
- SAC. 2-67 (3″ tall – for the lower rims)
- WP 668 (3″ tall – over each door)
- BLT. 10-43 (2″ tall – for the lower rims)
We took these markings from the 1973-1974
historic photos of WP668. Here is what we think they mean:
- WP stands for Western Pacific Railroad
- 668 WP’s individual number of our caboose
- LT WT 47700 WP668’s last official weight: 47,700 pounds
- SAC. 2-67 February 1967, WP668’s last test inspection date
- WP 668 the official name of our caboose
- BLT. 10-43 October 1943, WP668’s built date – when WP668 was converted
from a 1916 boxcar into a caboose
John and I discussed whether to have the built date be 10-16 (as we have seen on several
of
WP668’s sisters) but decided to conform to her 1973-1974 markings. There are also
several other sets of small inspection markings dated from 1958 to 1973 we will paint
on. However, those are in the kind of cut-letter font readily available in stencils
at local hardware stores. We are trying not to be too finicky (model railroaders
who must get everything exactly perfect are derisively called “rivet counters”)
while remaining true to WP668’s history.
When FREDs (flashing
rear-end devices) came into use in the mid-1970s, railroad cabooses became
much less needed. Cabooses served as a the conductor’s office and crew break room
as well as a way to check on the back of the train. Cabooses had either cupolas or bay
windows so that the conductor could oversee that all was well. In the mid-1970s,
US railroads began taking cabooses out of service and chopping them up for scrap.
A few cabooses, like WP668, were lucky enough to end up in museums. At some point
between 1974 (the date the last historic photo we have was taken in Sacramento, CA)
and December 2005 (when we first saw WP668 at the
Golden Gate Railroad Museum in San Francisco), WP668 had her ladders chopped
off – presumably to avoid providing an attractive and dangerous nuisance (an easy
way to climb onto her then-fragile roof).
Last night, Chris* the welder came over with the first leg of the steel pipe
replacement ladders he is fabricating for us. John and Chris tried it out and it
fits WP668 as it should. One end of the ladder slots into round cups welded onto
the steel of the back deck; the other end bolts onto the roof and connects to
the rooftop walkway. Once the ladders are done, we can put the metal skin on the
new roof, then build the roof walkway on top of the metal.
* Chris Gremich “The Iron Expert” of CG Designs in San Jose, CA, phone: 408-313-3706
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