prototypes

[sonnyw]

on prototype railroads did some roads ever run with a different road caboose? also did the prototypes ever run freight behind 462 locos?

[jward]

it was very common in the diesel years to use other railroad's cabooses, especially on runthrough trains.

good examples would be trains on the old rf&p south of Washington dc were handed off to the seaboard coast line, and would often have scl cabooses. or, the western Maryland run-throughs with the n&w at connellsvilole, pa would go from one railroad to the other without ever swapping locomotives and cabooses.

another thing that often happened was that when railroads merged, their equipment migrated all over the combined system long before it got repainted for the new railroad.

[sonnyw]

THANKS JEFF,I GUESS I CAN STOP TRYING TO FIND DIFFERENT CABOOSES FOR MY DIFFERENT ROADS AND SAVE A BUCK.

[rogertra]

on prototype railroads did some roads ever run with a different road caboose? also did the prototypes ever run freight behind 462 locos?

On their own track?  Simply put, no.  There were probably exceptions but I doubt it.  If there were, you have to ask yourself whether you want to model the exceptions or what was usual/typical/normal practice.

A CNR train on CNR track would always have a CNR van.

An NYC train on NYC track an NYC hack.

A SOU train on SOU track a SOU caboose.

Run through trains?  My experience, limited to roads around Montreal.

The NYC freight coming into Montreal would always have NYC power on the head end and an NYC caboose on the rear.

The D&H would come up with either a 'Napierville Junction Railway' (The D&H Canadian subsidiary) pair of RS-3s and an NJ caboose or D&H power with a D&H caboose.

As for the examples by jward I'll take his word for it.

Cheers

Roger T.

[jward]

roger you don't have to take my word for it. go to fallen flags web site:
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/

look up various railroads, scroll down through the list of caboose photos and note the locations the photos were taken. there are photos of rf&p cabooses everywhere from florida to Pocatello, Idaho (not bad for a 100 mile railroad) and western Maryland cars in Chicago and flint Michigan (from a railroad that never quite made it to Pittsburgh.

Canada is a foreign country, they did things differently up there. the two biggest railroads both went to all the same places with little need to run through onto the other line. and there were restrictions on the use of Canadian locomotives and cabooses in the usa for many years that would have precluded their use on run throughs with us railroads. down here in the states, we had a much more localized railroad system with many small companies that had to co-operate with each other to compete against the few large systems. many of these smaller lines had one or more of their end terminals in ridiculously small towns that would otherwise have been a whistlestop, but used them and their often cramped yard facilities to hand off trains to another railroad. by pooling equipment on expedited schedules, these smaller lines could remain competitive with much larger lines like the b&o or the Pennsylvania.

[rogertra]

roger you don't have to take my word for it. go to fallen flags web site:
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/

I wasn't doubting you.

Cheers

Roger T.

[Desertdweller]

It would depend on the type of train involved.  Run-through freights especially would carry a caboose from a connecting railroad sometimes.

When I worked for railroads in the Midwestern US, local freights would often operate with the same crew everyday.  In these instances, especially if they were "turns" (returning to the same terminal every day), cabooses would actually be assigned to individual conductors.  Woe to anyone who roughly handled or used another conductor's caboose!  Those cabooses would always belong to the operating railroad.

In the modern era, caboose use is unusual.  Examples would be the ATSF caboose used by the BNSF on a local freight out of Dodge City, KS; or cabooses used as cars to ride on when making long shoving moves.

In the early years of the merger era, when equipment from merged railroads were pooled, cabooses from merger partners would wind up on the other partners' trains.

Les

[J3a-614]

In regard to the second part of the question, about roads using 4-6-2s as freight power. . .

Yes, it was done, sometimes quite frequently, sometimes even with 4-6-2s built specifically for freight service.

For most roads, it would have been a bit unusual; the extra powered axle of a 2-8-2 was quite valuable for most freight service.

Some roads in relatively level territory did use 4-6-2s quite regularly in fast freight service.  These included the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, the Atlantic Coast Line (largely USRA light 4-6-2s or clones), and the Florida East Coast.  Take note of how flat most of these roads were and are!

Canadian National and Canadian Pacific also used 4-6-2s in freight service.  Again this would be in flat country, like the prairies.  CP even used its 4-6-4s in freight service.

CP in particular liked to use light 4-6-2s as general service branch line power.  The road even bought something like 100 NEW light 4-6-2s specifically for such secondary services in the 1940s.  This was the G5 class, and at least six survivors are around today.  It was a modernized version of a locomotive that dated back to around 1906 or so.

Then there were the roads that ran actual freight designed 4-6-2s.  These roads included the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the Lehigh Valley, and the New York Central (class K-11).  These engines all dated to around 1910, all rolled on 70-inch drivers (relatively small for a 4-6-2 but about the same size used on later fast freight engines, such as 2-8-4s) and would have been used in fast freight service. Later, as bigger engines took over the fast freight service (4-8-2s on the NYC, 4-8-4s on LV), the engines would be reassigned to secondary local freight service and passenger service.  The NYC even used some of them as passenger switchers in Chicago.  

About 20 or so NYC K-11s, converted to burning oil because of the fire hazard in the woods of upstate New York, would handle something like 90% of all motive power assignments, freight and passenger, on the Adirondack Division (Utica to Lake Placid, N.Y.) from at least the early 1930s to dieselization of the route in the early 1950s.  This would have included through freights for connections to a line to Canada that was abandoned around 1947.

Bowser Manufacturing used to make a model of the NYC K-11, but they have been out of the steam locomotive business for some years now.  I would have to admit that while I enjoyed building one, and wouldn't mind working on some more, the model itself would have to be considered quite crude in terms of detail by today's standards.

Beyond that, the use of 4-6-2s in freight was more often in an emergency situation, such as heavy traffic and the unavailability of what would have been normal freight power.

[rogertra]

Canada is a foreign country, they did things differently..

I forgot to mention.

Actually, no they didn't and no they don't.  Canada uses practically the same rule book as the USA roads, with the usual minor differences just like there are between American roads. Canada uses the same operating practices with minor variations just as there's minor variation between American roads.  All Canadian roads are members of the AAR, our railroad civil and mechanical engineers all belong to the same professional associations.  At one time our railroad unions were all the same as the American unions. For all intents and purposes, there's no difference between American roads and Canadian roads and probably between Mexican roads as well.  We have to be very close in the way things are done as Canadian crewed trains operate into the USA the same as American train operate into Canada.  Also keep in mind that on paper, Canadian railways own a very large percentage of American railroads so again, it pays to be the same.

After all, when you sleep next to the elephant, what ever way the elephant rolls, you roll the same way as well.

Cheers

Roger T.

[Piyer]

4-6-2s on freight..... yes, as witnessed here on the Boston & Maine: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bmrrhs/13934215523/

Cabooses on foreign roads..... yes, but this is somewhat dependent on the time period we are talking about. For much of their history, a caboose was assigned to a specific conductor and his crew. At their away terminal, the caboose was where they usually slept, and since crews scarcely left their home road's rails (yes, there are exceptions, but let's ignore the for simplicity's sake), in that era the conductor's home-away-from-home would not have left him - just as locomotives of one road wouldn't have left home rails.

Equipment pooling agreements, largely a diesel era thing, and changes in the way cabooses were assigned, opened the door for wandering locomotives and cabooses. Changes in States' full-crew laws, as well as railroad labor agreements, opened the door for FRED (Flashing Rear End Device) to eliminate the caboose altogether for the majority of trains. The exact years of these changes would depend upon what you are modeling. If you are not modeling a specific railroad, then a ballpark date would be: late 1950s / mid-1960s for the start of pooled equipment on some trains, ubiquitous by 2000; 1980s for the vanishing of cabooses, with FRED being ubiquitous by 1995 on mainline trains - cabooses or "switching platforms" as they were redubbed, continue in use today on certain local trains and shortlines.

[RAM]

The Frisco had freight 4-6-2s.  They had dog house on the tender and white lettering.  The passenger locos. had gold lettering.  I saw a picture of a passenger and a freight 4-6-2 double heading a freight train. 

[Len]

When the early bigger mergers were happening, e.g., Southern absorbing Central of Georgia, etc., is was fairly common to see "foreign road" cabooses from absorbed lines in strange places.

Len