Why did rail do away with the caboose?

Question

I know railroaders stay in a motel or use shuttle service to get back home. The caboose seems to make sense as a mobile motel and kitchen. What happened and when did it all end?

Answer 1

A little off the subject but i'm a breakman and I don't think i'm obsolete!

Answer 2

All of the above, with safety concerns as well.

Injuries and fatalities as a result of slack action and/or resulting derailment were all too common occurrences.

SP cupola and bay window cabooses were in essence 35 ton flimsy bumps on the rear end of a tonnage train, and it didn't take much to knock the h**l out of them.  I believe the UP cupola cabs had concrete floors, so they were much heavier and fared slightly better when meeting up with excessive slack action, and the few I rode over the hill between Sparks and Roseville had a notably smoother overall ride to them.  Their cushioning devices were superior to the SP offerings as well.  SP ran their caboose later than some of the other carriers, surviving until somewhere around 1990.

Answer 3

Technology happened.

Answer 4

A matter of expense.  Class 1 railroads finally did away with the caboose on mainline trains in the early 80's.

Answer 5

The Flashing Rear-End Devise or FRED does the job that a 2 man crew could do and cheaper. I think it happened within the last 15 to 20 years. I remember seeing cabooses sporadically in the early nineties but it was rare.

F.R.E.D. is a motion sensor that measures break line pressure and accidental seperation of the train. Some railroads still use cabooses when backing up on local runs.

Answer 6

Multiple unit brakes made the brakeman obsolete.

Cabooses were expensive to maintain.

New cameras and lights at the end of the train eliminated need for anyone in the back of the train.

It started in the 50s, really.

The history channel has a show on Cabooses.

Cabooses are cool.

Answer 7

We British folks call a caboose a Guards Van.

The use of trains with continuous braking, (i.e. all the wagons having brakes actuated by the locomotive), made guards vans obsolete over here.

Answer 8

Using the caboose as a sleeping room after the run ended quite some time ago.  It probably lasted longer on branch lines, but even there it was an infrequent practice.  During the run, I am sure there was plenty of sleeping going on, esp. during the days of the 15 hr workday.  In Kansas City, there are two jobs that I know of that still use the caboose.  None are road jobs, although the Soo Line (now IC&E here) used cabooses on the road sometimes up until they became CP in the late '90s.  BNSF uses two cabooses to switch an industrial park in Lenexa, KS.  There is lots of backing over long distances.  Having a crew mwmber hang off a ladder for more than a mile is a pain (sometimes litteraly).  Quite often, they will sandwich the locos between the cabooses (cabeese?) to save run-arounds.  The UP uses a caboose on its Kaw Bridge job as there are no restroom facilities where they work, or on the switchers they use.  This job has a potty equipped caboose.

Answer 9

Cabooses were done away with as a labour saving move. Train crews, decades ago, used to have a full five members - three in the locomotive, two in the caboose. As the crews were pared down (modern ones have two or three, depending on the assignment), a second place wasn't needed, and now everyone rides in the locomotive.

Technology also helped rid the railway of the caboose. Tail-end devices mounted on the last car monitor brake pipe air pressure, can deploy the emergency brakes from a toggle on the engineer's control stand, and are equipped with motion detectors. The engineer's control stand also usually has a DMD (distance measuring device), kind of like an odometer in footage, which allows them to measure distances along the way.

Wayside inspection systems have also replaced the visual inspections previously offered by crew members in the caboose. Every so often on a main line, these systems will scan the train for defects, such as hot wheels, overheated bearings, shifted loads, and dragging equipment. They broadcast their results over the main line radio channel.

Cabooses can still be seen on short lines, yard assignments, and some road switchers. However, many Class 1 (large) railways only use them as "rider cars", meaning the doors are usually boarded or welded shut, and it's nothing more than a fancy platform for crew members to ride on in the event the train needs to back up for an extended length.