C & O caboose

The caboose was a fixture on the end of freight trains for more than a century, serving as a sheltered vantage point from which trainmen could watch the cars ahead, cook and eat their meals, and where the conductor could do paperwork. The Chesapeake & Ohio caboose discussed here was part of an order of 100 wood cabooses built by the Standard Steel Car Company of Baltimore, Md., numbered 90700 to 90799 and costing $2,728.49 each. Its wood-caboose style was a C&O system standard that other manufacturers also followed, and the 90700-series was distinctive for its center cupola window and for being the last cabooses built for the Chesapeake and Ohio that were delivered riding on archbar trucks, which were later replaced with a more modern truck with heavy cast side frames. Caboose 90776 was built in November 1924, remained in service until February 1979, was donated to the City of Mount Vernon in June 1979, later stood in front of the former Pennsylvania Railroad station on South Main Street, and was moved to the Kokosing Gap Trail in Gambier in October 1997. Fewer than 35 of the 90700-series cabooses are known to exist today.

Gambier, Ohio · United States