Central Kansas Railway (CKR) Caboose 1959
CKR caboose 1959 began life as Santa Fe Railway CE-11 class caboose 999765, built in 1981 by International Car Company of Kenton, Ohio. It was one of 75 steel cabooses in the order, which subsequently operated throughout the Santa Fe system. Cabooses, or “waycars” as Santa Fe and some other railroads called them, were typically placed at the rear of freight trains and served as an observation post and office for the conductor, who was responsible for a given train’s activities and movements. A rear brakeman also occupied cabooses to help with any work requiring adding or delivering cars, throwing turnouts (switches) to allow movement from one track to another, handling hand brakes, connecting airbrake hoses and other duties related to safe and efficient operations.
On many segments of the Santa Fe cabooses were assigned to specific conductors, who sometimes decorated the interiors as a home-away-from-home. In the latter part of the 20th century, railroads began extending crew districts and cabooses would often remain on a train the entire distance between its point of origin and its destination. An example would be a caboose remaining on a freight train between Bakersfield, California, and Kansas City. Assigning cabooses to specific conductors ended.
By the early 1980s, safety technology advanced to the point at which railroads successfully convinced the U.S. government that cabooses could safely be replaced by electronic end of train (EOT or ETD) devices that would also save significant costs associated with operating and maintaining caboose fleets. By the mid and late 1980s, most Class 1 (large) U.S. railroads were selling or abandoning huge amounts of branch line track mileage due to loss of freight shippers and/or high operating costs. The need for cabooses significantly diminished.
In 1993, the Central Kansas Railway was created when it purchased 900 miles of Santa Fe lines in Kansas. The acquisition included some equipment including locomotives and caboose 999765, which CKR painted and renumbered to 1959. After struggling through the 1990s, CKR was purchased in 2001 by Pittsburg, Kansas, based Watco, which formed the Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad that continues to operate today. Watco donated CKR caboose 1959 to our museum.