Lititz Caboose Museum

The Lititz Caboose was purchased by the Lititz Springs Park Board Caboose Committee in 2000, restored by Gerhart Machinery Company of Lititz, and dedicated July 1, 2001. It serves as a companion to the replica of the 1884 Lititz Passenger Depot and Express Station, known as the Lititz Welcome Center. A caboose was an office and tool car required at the end of all freight trains, occupied by the conductor and flagman, who watched over the train in transit from the high seats in the cupola at the center of the car. Those jobs and the cars disappeared by 1984 as modern technology replaced them. The Reading Railroad Company introduced these standard, or "Northeastern," style cabooses in 1924 and built 295 of them through 1948, while other railroad companies copied Reading blueprints for their own cabooses. The steel under-frame components for the Lititz Caboose were built in the Reading Car Shops and shipped to the Elizabethport, New Jersey, Car Shops for completion in May 1942. The car gave 40 years of rail service, 34 with the Jersey Central Railroad as CNJ 91530 and six more with Conrail as CR 18878. Before coming to Lititz, it was privately owned and stood at Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, from 1985 to 2000. The Reading Railroad originally ran through Lititz on the Reading and Columbia Branch from 1863 to 1976, and its history has continued to be preserved by the Reading Company Technical and Historical Society, founded in 1976.

Lititz, Pennsylvania · United States