Amtrak F40 . . . With a Caboose?

Before there was actual train riding, there was model railroading. Before there was American model railroading, all my stuff came from Japan. So, when I came to the US in the '90s, I didn't have a clue what I was looking for, prototypically.

So I dusted off my collection last night and came across my old LifeLike Amtrak set. It's a powered F40, and unpowered F40, and a... steel center cupola caboose???

Did these cabooses actually ever exist? They they ever trailer on a passenger train? Now that I found this set, I want to put something inbetween the F40s and the caboose. I need phase II or so... What is a good (ie: Quality and cheap!) consist that I can put behind these F40s? And would I actually ever want to run with that silly caboose?

Something like these?

http://www.hebners.net/amtrak/amtCAB.html

I think they were primarily used on MoW trains rather then revenue service, but I could be wrong.

peter

You would often find cabooses on "mixed" trains, that is passenger AND freight trains combined. It was extreamly rare to ever see a caboose on a "pure" passenger train. The caboose is considered a "freight car" and as such normally had brake rigging and couplers that were common to freight cars. Additionally, there was no "safe way" to transition from a pax car to a caboose, as the cabooses were not outfitted with tight-fitting diaphrams to allow safe passage between the two.

You will however frequently find cabooses attached to pax cars in tourist and scenic railroads.

PerRock said:

Something like these?http://www.hebners.net/amtrak/amtCAB.html

I think they were primarily used on MoW trains rather then revenue service, but I could be wrong.

peter

Click to expand...

Similar, but silver with the pointless arrow livery and an orange roof.

rrdude - I agree with you. I would imagine something from the rainbow era, but I don't think Amtrak ever ran mixed trains (except for the Express Trak). Hmmm... Maybe if I get a long Superliner consist and if I could find some Express Trak box cars, then I could put that on the end. I don't think that the livery I described ever existed on that caboose, though.

The Amtrak cabooses were never, ever, used by Amtrak for pax service, only as part of a MOW train.

I did HOWEVER, ride in a D&RG caboose, one of many, that was sent as part of a rescue train, to a derailed Amtrak Zephyr in Glenwood Canyon in the mid 80's, so TECHNICALLY, I rode in a caboose as part of an Amtrak trip.....

Did Amtrak ever put a caboose on the Auto Train?

No, but the original Auto-Train corporation did, Not sure at what point in its existence it started or for how long it was done, but a Google Image search for "Auto-Train caboose" yields some of the photos I ran across long ago, of them hitched to the end of their trains, which struck me as odd-looking.

---PCJ

But it seems to be like the same caboose in my little set. Just the wrong livery.