C & O caboose

The humble caboose was a fixture on the end of freight trains for more than a century. It has been called by many slang names including crummy, shack, shanty and cabin car. A caboose provided a sheltered vantage point from which trainmen could watch the cars ahead, cook and eat their meals and where the conductor could do paperwork.<br> This Chesapeake & Ohio caboose was part of an order of 100 wood cabooses built by the Standard Steel Car Company of Baltimore, Md. These cars were numbered 90700 to 90799 and cost $2,728.49 each. The style of this wood caboose was a C&O system standard and other cabooses were built by different manufacturers to this same C&O design.<br> The 90700-series cabooses were unique in that they were built with a center cupola window and also were the last cabooses built for the Chesapeake and Ohio that were delivered riding on archbar trucks (wheel sets), later replaced with a more modern truck with heavy cast side frames. Caboose 90776 was built in November 1924 and rode the rails until February 1979. It was donated to the City of Mount Vernon in June 1979 and sat for many years in front of the former Pennsylvania Railroad station on South Main Street until it was moved to the Kokosing Gap Trail in Gambier in October 1997. Less than 35 of the 90700-series cabooses are known to exist today.