There are instances of locos

There are instances of locos using "idler cars" all over the place and I'm pretty sure I've read of coal trains that would carry a caboose and then use it to push hoppers  around. How far they pushed the cars I don't know. I think it was usually just short distances around a tipple but I don't know for sure.

Absolutely

Simple answer is yes. 

More common then one would think during the age of the caboose. 

Lots of local jobs would end up at some point requiring the cab to be against the power while the shove to a spot due to lack of a run-around. As long as the shove was protected the cab could be anywhere. 

Also labor contracts played a part of this during the age of the caboose. I have read about a Lehigh Valley job that would often have less then 5 cars and a caboose. Due to the track arrangement the cab started against the loco either out or on the return. 

Most C&O caboose (including

Most C&O caboose (including many “wood” caboose) had a steel frame strong enough to handle pushing.  And on at least some coal trains they had two caboose one behind the tender used by the front front end crew.  So in those cases depending on track arrangements some of the cars had to be pushed by the caboose.

-Doug M

Yes

As you pointed out it would have to be low speed and there would have to be a person riding the leading end of the lead car, the train would have to stop and flag any crossings, unless there were warning devices at the crossing and the crew could see traffic was stopped.

You seem to be describing a local move.  With wood frame cabooses, helpers would often have to be cut in ahead of the caboose, but this doesn't appear to be a helper situation.

been there/done that...

...more times than I'd like. In such situations, the hoghead is usually the one most unhappy about it for the reasons mentioned above...lousy sight.

One incident sticks in my memory. At the start of our shift, the YM calls the crew room and tells us which engine to use, and to pick up that caboose behind said engine and bring it up with us. We pulled it up to the brainbox to get our work for the night. "What do you wanna do with the cab[oose]?" "Hang onto it, I'll let you know what to do with it in a bit."

At the end of the night we still had ahold of the caboose. We shoved it back down to the crew room where we found it and went home. Knucklehead. 

To add to Dave's information

To add to Dave's information the reason for a caboose on road freights was a place for the train /not engine crew  to sleep in at the end of their run because of no goood hotels. When a caboose was/is used in switching/local work it's primary purpose was/is as a safe place to ride to protect the leading end of the move. Riding on the side of a freight car for several blocks/miles is un-safe and painful especially in bad weather.

If a industry job had a caboose it was used as what is known today as a "shoving platform" to take away from the word caboose as the term might conflict with union agreements and frankly management didn't want to be accused of using them as they were considered out of date, expensive to maintain and un-necessary. Once the crew reached their industrial switching area the caboose would be stashed out of the way to avoid it being damaged in switching and not used until heading back to the yard at the rear of the train or sometimes next to the engine...where ever the conductor wanted it to be. 

Barry

Wagontop Caboose

Search YT for...

Dear MRHers,

Reccomend searching YT with terms

- "Eastside Freight Railroad"

- "Meeker Southern"

Both operations show examples of Loco + Caboose + Cars "shoving" moves...

Happy Modelling,

Aim to Improve,

Prof Klyzlr

Other shoving plaforms

I seem to remember a few cases of obsolete passenger cars or combines being used as "shoving platforms" too, particularly retired heavyweights. Not so common now, I suspect.

An "office" 20 foot container on a flat would work, too. I printed  one for exactly that purpose myself. (Red one on the left, obviously...) 

Caboose

That's the reason there are bunks on cabooses, but the real reason there are cabooses is that there weren't air brakes on trains until about 1900, so for the first 70 years of railroading brakes were applied and released by hand, so there was a need for someplace for the brakemen to ride, plus there was no CTC so all the switches had to be lined back to normal by hand after the train used them, and finally there weren't block signals so the train needed flagmen on the rear to signal a following train to stop. 

A reason not often discussed was that early trains used link and pin couplers which failed quite often.  With no air brakes, when the train parted, there was nothing to either stop the rear portion, it would just roll way, and there was no way to notify the head end, it would just keep on going until it figured out part of the train was missing.  So the caboose put people on the rear portion to stop and protect the disconnected part of the train.

Been there/done that [edit]

Matt has several different threads going here. I seem to have answered the one about switching with the engine in the middle, but answered it on the thread about shoving cars with a caboose in the lead. 

The olde gentleman was confused. (It's happening a LOT these days.)

With no runaround available it was common to use a caboose on the lead end for the crew. This was standard fare on the Key Highway in Baltimore, as well as anywhere in the Terminal. I was on the 
"gutter job", so called because we worked the customer sidings on either side of the multiple track main. It was not unusual to shove as many as 30 cars down the hill from A Yard to CX Tower at the start of the night; after these were spotted we'd bring the "all rail" outbound back to A Yard. We did this with no caboose; the foreman and rear brakeman rode the lead car while the head brakie watched off the fireman's side for sight. I suppose they could have commandeered an old caboose for the job, but they didn't bother.

The Key Highway job made two trips. First, they shoved the PC interchange down the street and around the Inner Harbor to President Street for the PCRR, and we'd bring anything they had for us back. Sometimes this could be as many as 40 cars. The crew had an ancient, assigned wood caboose with no windows and a loud airchime whistle mounted on the lead end. A brakeman hanging on the side of a boxcar in traffic would have been dangerous. Blowing the airchime to wake motorists up was necessary, and sometimes opening the whistle valve all the way to dump the air in emergency was needed.

Near the end of my career, a beat up L&N transfer caboose was assigned to Locust Point until it finally was wrecked. "Shoving platforms" were what was left after cabooses were hard to find. 

On the main track locals, a caboose was typical, as we often had to pull down a branch to switch a customer and then shove back out to go somewhere else. The later shoving platforms were unoccupied unless there was shoving to be done. CSX welded plates over the windows and actually welded the doors shut when turning a caboose into a platform.

 

Good stuff, Dave. Barry

Good stuff, Dave.

Barry

An example

One of the railroad areas I looked into for possibly modeling was is the NYS&W Utica area industry.  The New York Mills industrial track has a runaround near where it branches off the main, and as you proceed from there to the end of track there are 3 facing point industries and one trailing point.  Depending on what needs switching, they sometimes do end up with cars on both ends of the loco both going out and coming back.  All the reordering happens at the French Rd runaround so they can do all the mainline running with the engine in the lead.  I wrote it up a bit with some track diagrams and links to videos here:  https://rices-rails.blogspot.com/p/nys-utica-area-industry-tracks.html

Interesting stuff, Ken and

Interesting stuff, Ken and well documented.

Thanks, for the link.

Barry

NS Caboose Still Working

In Elkhart Indiana, the NS has an exchange with the Elkhart & Western part of Pioneer Rail. NS runs with a caboose most days. The caboose can be on either end of the engine or anywhere in the line of cars NS is delivering or picking up from E&W. Only place I ever see a caboose anymore working away.  Elkhart Model Railroad Club (which I belong to and am the webmaster of) has a picture on the front page right now. I can't figure out to post a picture here so here is the address. http://www.emrrc.com

Jim Ford

Thanks for all the

Thanks for all the information here, very helpful.

I posted two threads because I figured these were different enough and sometimes the second question in an email get overlooked.

Matt

Crew on the rear

also watched and smelled for hot boxes. Before radios they'd communicate a problem to the engine by the air line....DaveB

Didn't the all steel wagontop

Didn't the all steel wagontop caboose come to life when the C&O/B&O needed pusher engines for their mountain trackage, and they wished to push the train against the caboose rather than take the time to switch it out??

(Perhaps this has already been pointed out, but I'm not sure it was stated in this manner??)

origin of steel wagontop caboose?

no comments on this suggestion?

Wagontop

Not sure that its a cause and effect kinda thing.

The B&O needed steel underframe cabooses in order for helpers to push the caboose.  The wagontop cabooses were built in the 1930's.  So the question would be, did the B&O have steel underframe cabooses prior to that?  I know other roads were building steel cabooses back in the 1920's, so a steel underframe caboose was not a new idea by the mid-1930's.

Not sure that the wagontop design was specifically to allow engines to push the caboose or whether it was it had a steel underframe to allow the engine to push it.

I think the wagontop caboose was more of a case of the B&O trying to expand all the design possibilities of the use of the wagontop construction technique, they made several types of wagontop cars, boxcars and covered hoppers.

For Matt

Yes indeed, their were many times an engine pushed a caboose and cars. On the PRR, they used pushers that were behind the cabin/caboose when pushing up Horseshoe Curve. Those cabins were all steel and had push bars to strengthen them. As for pushing just cars - that was done by local freights for convenience in switching industries with facing vs trailing turnouts. With or without a caboose. As for any caboose used this way, it must have had steel - for the underframe as a minimum. All steel cabins on the PRR were made very early. Their N5's being the most famous and most numerous. The "push bars" mentioned above were added for better safety for people riding in them. I agree with Dave about the B&O. Those wagon roof cars were a large test for that design and were used for more than cabeese/cabooses (Aw shucks. No wonder the PRR called them cabins.) < humor> And didn't the Milwaukee Road or Burlington call them "Way Cars"? 

steel underframes only

By the 1920s or thereabouts, most railroads didn't want to push too hard with wooden framed cabeese. The danger was just too great. Obviously with just one empty car ahead of the cab, no problem; but with 70, 100 or 160 loads, the situation was quite different. However, with steel underframes, things were much more feasible.

On the C&O, most locals took TWO cabeese—one at each end. In such a case, any pushing move necessarily involved pushing the whole (relatively short) train in front of the caboose. As far as I know, by the time I know that this practice was in use (1940s), all of the wood frame cabins were gone. Nonetheless, the same road at the same time took care to cut pushers in ahead of the caboose on main line trains, even with steel cabeese, since both trains and helpers tended to be huge. I don't know when the double-caboose local practice was established. I know it was in place in the 1940s, when there is photographic evidence. Those same locations have barely any photographic coverage before that.

Thanks guys, informative

Thanks guys, informative postings

interesting to see whats been

interesting to see whats been inside of these welded up units, as some might not have been gutted out.

oops ment to add in the org posting.

but done by jay bird.

"been there done that"

2021-06-13 at 11:36.