1905 "Bobber" Caboose
(Click on images for a larger view)
Background
Two officers of the Ligonier Valley Rail Road Association were attending a
business meeting in October 2006 and one of the advisors, the Rev. Richard
Flock, mentioned that there was a caboose located on a hill in Summerhill, Pa.
and asked if we had heard of it. We said we hadn't but we would like to see it
and if it was in reasonable condition, investigate the possibility of acquiring
it for the Ligonier Valley Rail Road Association. In the Spring of 2007 we
traveled to Summerhill to take a look at the caboose. Mr. John Costello, the
owner and a lifelong resident of Summerhill, Pa., met us and graciously gave us
a tour of the caboose and his property. Mr. Costello acquired the 28,000-pound
wood-framed car in 1963. At the time, Mr. Costello
owned Costello Construction Co. and arranged to haul the caboose from a
Uniontown rail yard to his family's home in Summerhill, near Johnstown Pa. Mr.
Costello leveled a slope on a hillside on his property and laid rails and ties
on about 20 tons of ballast base. The Costello children, John Jr., Susan
Lorditch, Margaret Plank, and Amy Suhr, spent hours playing in the caboose
along with the neighborhood children.
Caboose History
The caboose is a PRR Class ND cabin car built on April 4, 1905, with a Series
Number of 485994. It received United States Safety Appliances Standard at
Pitcairn on April 26, 1913. From the old records, the car was not marked as
destroyed, so was still in service on that date. The caboose was one of 18
Class ND cabin cars that were eventually sold to the Monongahela Railroad in
1919, during Federal control of the railroads (during and immediately after
World War I). The Monongahela had a
serious shortage of cabooses at the time. The date of sale of 485944 was February 25, 1919.
According to the Pennsylvania Railroad the Class ND cabin car has a steel
underframe, four wheels with a 13 foot, 6 inch wheelbase, a length of 29 feet coupler to
coupler, and weighs 28,000 pounds. The Ligonier Valley Rail Road owned at least
one of these cars, built in March 1907.
The Donation
When we broached the idea of acquiring the caboose Mr. Costello said he would
consider it. When the Costellos were preparing to sell their home and
move to Mechanicsburg, Pa. this fall, Mr. John Costello Jr. and the Rev.
Richard Flock, contacted the Ligonier Valley Rail Road Association to tell us
that Mr. and Mrs. Costello would donate the caboose to us. We gratefully
accepted the donation and arranged for the Ligonier Construction Company of
Laughlintown, to move the caboose from Summerhill to a temporary storage
location in Laughlintown. This occurred just before Christmas, 2007. On
February 16, 2008, the caboose was moved from Laughlintown to an area behind
the Darlington Station where we had installed a section of track to hold the
caboose. The caboose's interior will be refurbished and it will be equipped
with a handicapped-accessible entrance. The car will be used as an attraction
for children and their families visiting the Ligonier Valley Rail Road Museum at the Darlington
Station. The association will adorn it with a plaque that states: "Contributed by The Costello
Family of Summerhill."
The Move
The donation stipulated that we had to remove the caboose from the Summerhill property by
December 31, 2007 or the caboose would revert to the Costello family. In order to get things moving we contacted
Ligonier Construction Company of
Laughlintown to conduct the move and also grade an area behind the Darlington
Station where could build a pad to display the caboose. We needed two rails and a few ties once
the pad was constructed. We contracted with Atlas
Railroad Construction Company of Charleroi, Pa. to install the hardware. The three man crew from Atlas
arrived on February 12th., a snowy, wintery day, and did a very professional job of
installing the track in a few hours. The move from storage in Laughlintown to the station took place on Saturday,
February 16th.
The first problem was getting the trailer hauling the caboose into the parking lot. Idlewild Hill
Road is only two lanes so the trailer had to be uncoupled from the cab and a piece of heavy equipment was
used to drag the trailer into the parlinkg lot. The next problem was maneuvering the trailer into place so the
caboose could be moved from the rails it was on to the rails on the pad. This took some time
as the alignment had to be exact and one end of the caboose had to be lifted as it was moved
from the trailer to the tracks. Once the first two wheels on were on the tracks on the pad,
the caboose rolled easily into place. After a final bit of alignment the caboose was centered on
the tracks and the job was complete. The project took seventeen months from its inception
in October of 2006 to February 2008. The next phase of this project is to seek some funding to
restore the caboose, add a handicapped-accessible ramp to one side on the caboose, and perform
the restoration with some volunteer help.
