I was just reading some info on a NKP web group, and they were talking about interior colors for cabooses. Has anyone here ever painted/detailed the interior of their caboose (or whatever proper name your favorite railroad called them)?
Thanks...pictures too please.

Scott - I have not done this to my cabooses (yet). Maybe you should lead the charge - I'd love to see someone give it a try. There are lots of interesting possibilities.

John

I've done one of those Keystone Grasse River Caboose kits adding a full interior and a Mullet River caboose kit. The latter comes with the interior as part of the kit minus some castings and other "stuff".............

I have not installed a caboose interior yet. I do have a few brass imports with complete interiors. I also have a couple of caboose kits to assemble that come with most of the interior parts. For the most part you can't tell weather a caboose has a complete interior or not. I think the cupola or bay window needs some detail and maybe the inside walls should be painted properly. Unless the car is meant as a show car, no one but you, will ever know what is inside. I do like having a crew member or two, on board however.

Good point, Lisa Marie. I never model what isn't going to be seen.

Of the half-dozen cabooses I have, just two of them have finished and detailed interiors. One is a scratch-built B&O four-wheel Class K-1 transfer caboose number C-721, which was intended to be a contest entry. Besides a fully detailed underbody with brake rigging and piping, it also includes brake valves and backing whistles on the platforms.

The interior has three leather-covered bunks, coat pegs, stove, coal scuttle, safety railing, sink, water tank, conductor's desk, conductor's valve, air brake gauge, two lockers and fusees in racks on the doors. There is no coupla on this transfer caboose.

Window glazing was scored to represent wire glass, an early form of safety glass that had what looked like chicken coop wire embedded in it. The interior is painted B&O's standard two- tone green with a Tuscan red floor. The prototype B&O C-721 was built at Mount Clare at the round car shop that is now the B&O Museum. It was assigned to the Staten Island Rapid Transit from January 1890 until it was burned for scrap at Arlington Yard in 1953. In the late 1930's, the cupola was removed in a rebuilding at St. George which also put a new steel underframe on the car.

The other is a steel-framed 8 wheel wood-body caboose with a coupla that I built and lettered for the "Susquehanna & Chesapeake," a model railroad name. It models a Wichita Falls & Southern car that appeared in one of Lucius Beebe's railroad books.

This caboose was featured in a four-part construction article I wrote for 'O Scale Railroading' at the time its name was changed to 'O Gauge Railroading' by Myron Biggar in 1989. The article series was titled 'Building a Wood-side Texas Caboose'. This model is detailed and outfitted like the B&O transfer caboose. Both models were built so their roofs can be easily removed to show the interior.

Ed Bommer