WHY ARE CABOOSES/CABEESES RED?

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> Plurals: Absolutely, "cabeeses" is not correct. Please drop that final "s".

> 

> Actually, "cabooses" is correct, but who wants to be tongue-tied trying to

> speak about trains? If "geese" is good enough for the goose, it surely

> should be good for a caboose. Write to your legislator!


I'm not sure that there was ever an officially correct plural of 
caboose.  My 1900 Webster and 1954 Funk & Wagnals do not give any plural 
at all.  Wikipedia suggests that the proper term is generally accepted 
as "cabooses", with "cabeese" being a more playfully used word.  For 
what it's worth, my spell checker is fine with "cabooses", but doesn't 
like "cabeese".

In John H. White, Jr.'s "The American Railroad Freight Car" there are 23 
pages about cabooses.  He uses the term "cabooses" a handfull of times, 
including a quote from 1883.  For the most part, he uses the term "cabin 
cars" to describe the plural.  This may be a reflection of the earlier 
name for the car, however, since he uses "caboose" and "cabooses" with 
more frequency as the subject date progresses.


> Color: Wild guess, same reason barns were red. But don't remember why -

> probably cost vs protection of wood from weather. 


I found this Trains article about cabooses. 
<http://trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=276>
Here is an excerpt, dealing with the color:
"Most railroads painted their cabooses "boxcar red" for high visibility. 
However, after World War II, the "little red caboose" showed up in many 
different colors, typically associated with the paint schemes found on 
the railroads' new diesel locomotives. The colorful caboose with its 
railroad's logo and paint scheme presented a rolling image for everyone 
to see."

Many cabooses were boxcar red, if for no other reason than red oxide 
paint is about the cheapest paint to manufacture, being basically ground 
up rust in some form of carrier (usually linseed oil at the time).  This 
is the same reason that oxide red became known as "boxcar red." 
Railroads, especially in the earlier years, were usually more concerned 
with getting equipment on the road as cheaply as possible, with the 
minimum of decoration, fuss, or bother.  A caboose was (eventually) 
accepted as a necessity on most roads, but there was no reason to make 
it fancy or pretty.  The car shops already had lots of red oxide paint 
around, so why not paint the caboose that color as well?

Bright red cabooses became more common later on, which I suspect has 
multiple causes.  For one, a brighter color increased visibility, and 
therefore safety.  Around WW2, paint in any color became more widely 
available (on a commercial scale), so there was less of an economic 
incentive to use oxide red.  Red, being seen as the "traditional" color 
for the caboose, would have gone from oxide red to bright red.  Bright, 
colorful diesels and a hopeful age called for more colorful equipment 
all around, and what more fitting symbol than the little red caboose? 
Also, a train was (and still is today) required to carry a red marker on 
the rear - anything red by day, and a red reflector or light by night. 
A bright red caboose served as a rear marker, even if it wasn't 
displaying any lights at all.  To a railroader, red marks the rear of a 
train.

That said, as mentioned above a caboose could be almost any color of the 
rainbow.  The very earliest cabooses were often decommissioned box cars 
or flat cars, done by the train crew, and therefore might have had no 
paint at all, or whatever color they had handy.  Yellow and cream were 
popular colors for early cabooses built by railroads - very possibly to 
make them more visible, as well as matching common passenger car colors.

Kenneth Rickman