N&W caboose paint schemes

[NW Modeling List]

I emailed a friend who recently retired  from NS (former N&W) who spent virtually his entire career at Kansas City where he was a Terminal Trainmaster.  The following was his response......

Yea, the P stood for "System Pool".  I'm not sure what the full mechanical standards were for a "Pool" caboose,  but they had electric lights and propane stoves and  a bag toilet and urinal. One big distinction is that there was a 2-page list of tools, supplies, and paper forms that had to be supplied on a system pool caboose.  Things to change knuckles, chains, markers, hotbox coolant, drinking water, and the forms to report injuries, crossing accidents, blind siding and wheel reports, etc...it goes on and on.  Not that they didn't need all this stuff on local cabs but typically the crew took care of it on those.  Transfer and yard cabooses had NOTHING on them.  If you put any tools on a yard caboose they would be stolen in a foreign yard, if not by your own people.  To be fair I thought it meant Propane for a long time and may have been told that early in the program.  Until the Wabash cabooses started showing up with propane stoves and no "P".  N&W started converting cabooses to System Pool cars in 1976 and it took about 2 years.  Then they could run anywhere on the railroad.  They met the Union requirements for any of the predecessor railroads.  Prior to that the Wabash cabooses were pooled on the Western Region, the NKP cabooses were assigned and pooled on the Lake Region and the old N&W and VGN cars were pooled on the A&P regions, and the PWV cars never left the Pittsburgh Division.  We still used Wabash C-18's on the occasional road train up until 1980 or so but they had to have everything on the list on them.  They were still okay to use on the Wabash end even if they weren't "P's".  Nobody told me what the white stripe meant, we just used the cabooses out that came in.  LOL  Cabooses were a pain in the a_ _.

Ed Painter Narrows, Virginia living in Russellville, AR



From: nw-modeling-list-bounces at nwhs.org [mailto:nw-modeling-list-bounces at nwhs.org] On Behalf Of NW Modeling List
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 1:07 PM
To: NW Modeling List
Subject: Re: N&W caboose paint schemes

"So would it be correct to assume that  ex-NKP C-5Ps, C-6Ps, C7Ps as well as C-9Ps on the Western Region  were likewise modified with these upgrades?"

Yes.

Jimmy
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