Category Archives: Caboose Project and Other Trains

December 15, 2011 · 11:10 pm

New Stove in WP668 Caboose

Each year, John and I do a little more to improve WP668, our backyard caboose in Willow Glen, California. Today, we finally finished the project to install a stove, making the space much more comfortable during the winter. We put in a Majestic Brand Oxford stove from Bay Area Fireplace. The stove is on top of an antique piece of red-brown marble I bought at an estate sale several years ago (since a stove cannot sit directly on a linoleum floor). Below is the history of our caboose from the WP668 web page.

WP668 Caboose History

1916:
- WP668 was originally built by Pullman as a steel strapped Western Pacific wooden box car in 1916 (during World War I).
- WP668’s steel straps are embossed in several places with the Pullman brand “ILLINOIS. G. U.S.A.”
1943:
- In October 1943, WP668 was converted to serve as a caboose on San Francisco Bay Area freight trains (during World War II).
- Two bay windows replaced the original side freight doors. The front and back doors and decks, and interior caboose fittings were installed.
1976:
- After serving in the Sacramento area on fruit trains of the Sacramento Northern line, WP668 was retired from active service.
- WP668 was sold by Western Pacific to a private owner who leased out the caboose as office space on the San Francisco waterfront.
- We think it was this first private owner who removed the front of one of the bay windows and cut out a large window opening in the side of WP668.
circa 2000

WP668 was acquired by the Golden Gate Railroad Museum in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point neighborhood.
Restoration by GGRM was planned and started.

2006

GGRM sold WP668 to John Plocher and Katy Dickinson in January 2006 after the museum lost its Hunter’s Point lease in San Francisco.
In February 2006, WP668 was moved by truck from San Francisco to storage in San Jose.
While in storage, the roof was rebuilt and the ceiling lights were installed.
Dickinson-Plocher backyard swimming pool was removed and a very short rail line built in the same location.

2007

San Jose City Council grants a variance for WP668. Building permits are issued.
In May 2007, WP668 was moved onto the very short rail line in the Dickinson-Plocher backyard.
The exterior was stripped and painted.
Both decks and the bay window were rebuilt.

2008

The inside was painted, the floor was rebuilt and covered with linoleum, the metal roof was installed.
The electrical and network wiring were completed.
The stained glass was designed and installed.
The cactus garden and arroyito were designed and created.
The historical markings and WP herald were added.
The ladders and stair handrails were designed and created.

2009

The San Jose City permits were signed off (24 February 2009).
Fainting couch restoration complete – couch moves into caboose.
Bay Window seat designed and installed.
Stair handrails coated and finished, stair lighting installed.

2010

Installed under carriage lighting.
Window seat cushion designed and created.

2011

Stove installed.

Work in Progress on WP668:
- Install roof walk, attach it to existing ladders
- Restore the rest of the windows (1 done, 5 to go)
- Complete the back deck and step woodwork (steel is done)
- Restore brake rigging and wheels
- Reattach and restore battery box
- Restore (replace?) the doors
- Caulk and paint repair

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September 11, 2011 · 6:25 pm

TechWomen Mentors’ Party

The TechWomen mentors from the Silicon Valley are keeping in good communication with their mentees in the Middle East and North Africa. We have seen about a dozen new projects, including non-profits and business start-ups, initiated so far by our 37 talented and energetic colleagues since they returned to MENA from working with us here in California. Many of the mentors continue to serve as individual and group advisors, despite being half a world away.

One of the last official phases of the 2011 U.S. State Department’s mentoring program will happen next month when a few of us go to visit the technical women in Morocco for a week. We had hoped to go to Lebanon as well but regrettably that trip had to be cancelled. Six of the mentees have recently won scholarships to return to the USA for a week to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, to be held 9-12 November 2011 in Portland, Oregon. We look forward to seeing them there!

Yesterday in the hot autumn afternoon, 17 of the technical and cultural mentors met at my house in Willow Glen (San Jose, CA) for a potluck dinner, to catch up and enjoy each others’ company. Mentors from Huawei, Intel, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Likelist, NetApp, Northgate Environmental Management, SF Public Press, and Symantec and other companies and organizations brought lovely dishes to share. My son Paul took a picture of us on the steps of my backyard caboose (WP668).

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Tagged as Huawei, Mentoring, Middle East, Paul, San Jose, technical women, TechWomen

July 16, 2011 · 6:57 pm

3 Beautiful Old Typewriters

In 2009, I wrote an entry about the old Remington Portable typewriter pictured at the top of my blog page. I recently acquired two more, an L.C. Smith & Corona Super Speed from a garage sale ($10), and an Oliver Standard Visible Writer (appropriately olive colored) which was a gift from my mother. All three are now part of my office in WP668 (our backyard caboose).

Typing this on my Apple MacBook Pro laptop, with its sleek compact design, makes me think again how far the mechanics of writing have come. The function of these three 80-year-old machines is the same but the designs are very different. I find them interesting and beautiful.

I learned to type on a portable typewriter. Now, many of them are being dismantled for their beautiful parts and sold a bit at a time on Etsy* and at craft fairs to those who like the steampunk look. As my husband says, before something gets to be antique and valuable, it has to survive being old and worn out.

* Etsy currently has 3,948 listings for handmade items such as rings, pendants, cuff links, and earrings which mention “typewriter keys”

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July 11, 2011 · 10:01 pm

Geeky Model Trains

While I was in Washington DC with the TechWomen mentoring program, my husband John was giving technical presentations at the National Model Railroad Association convention in Sacramento, California. He talked about state-of-the-art for model train layout wiring and the use of Arduino electronics in model trains. John also went on a Yolo Short Line train ride in Sacramento, a tour of the Lehigh Permanente Cement Plant in Cupertino, Sacramento area model railroad layout tours, a visit to the excellent California State Railroad Museum, and a generally had fun with the boys while I was off hanging out with the girls.

Arduino vs. Tino

My husband John is spending his free time preparing to give several talks at the National Model Railroad Association convention in Sacramento California early next month. He has been working for months on a demonstration unit to support his presentations – showing what a model railroad would look like of it was designed and wired as a series of control points connected by a codeline instead of in the usual arbitrary, hodgepodge ways. (A codeline delivers indications from the field to the train dispatcher, and sends commands from the dispatcher to the field.) John models in HO Scale when he is not working on our “prototype” caboose WP 668 in the back yard.

John’s project mostly looks like lots of blinky lights – especially when his office is dark. However, he tells me that this is state-of-the-art for model train layout wiring. John is in a running battle with our cat Tino, who likes to chew on little wires and keeps sneaking in to disable the Arduino.

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May 7, 2011 · 5:30 pm

Brunch in a Caboose

Over a year ago, my husband John and I donated a brunch in WP668, our backyard caboose, to the SAMA auction, to benefit the medical charity of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California). Today, we fed six guests who left very happy with their meal aboard our historic railroad car. The menu included:

Pastries from Flour Flower bakery and florist shop in San Jose
Eggs on sliced turkey baked in pastry cups (by John)
Layered fruit salad with honey and mint (by me)
Waffles (by John)
Barefoot Bubbly Moscato Spumante Champagne
Orange Juice
Coffee from Peet’s

The dogs were happy to play with new friends in their yard and were sure that the whole event had been planned for doggy entertainment.

Easter Egg Hunt

We had more than a dozen kids – aged 3 to 21 – plus their parents over for our annual Easter Egg Hunt last week here in San Jose, California. There were about 400 plastic eggs filled with candy, plus one gold and one silver egg to find in our backyard. We followed the same rules as last year with a few additions.

Last summer, one of our experienced egg hunters arrived with bags of empty plastic eggs for us. When she saw the eggs at a garage sale, Galena bought them to help support her favorite springtime activity. Following up on Galena’s inspiration, this Easter we said that kids could take home their baskets and plastic eggs if they wanted to but they could also leave them with us for next year. The parents thought this was great idea! I insisted that any eggs left with us had to be empty and whole – with tops and bottoms matched up (no leaving half eggs). We ended up with several cubic feet of empty eggs, plus 8 empty baskets.

This year I again provided “advisors” in the form of ceramic bunnies of different sizes and styles. Each child can pick any basket and advisor they want before the hunt starts. The advisors support the young hunters so that their parents are not tempted to help. I buy bunnies and baskets at garage sales and second hand stores all year so that the children have a wide selection to choose from.

Several of our Huawei co-workers came with their kids. I don’t think they hold Easter Egg Hunts in China so this was a novel treat. They had fun playing in WP668, our backyard caboose. The potluck lunch included a wide variety of dishes which everyone enjoyed eating.