These are the first six road names on our brand new Transfer Cabooses in HO scale. Unlike our last announcement which featured the “short, bay window caboose” this group consists of genuine “Transfer” cabooses. Transfer cabooses were used for cross-town hops between yards. In the post-caboose era they have been used as “shoving platforms” providing a place for the brakeman or conductor to ride and be the engineer’s eyes during long backup moves. They did not have cupolas or bay windows, cots or amenities. In fact many didn’t have electricity. Most were built in the railroad’s own shops. Details will include wire grab irons and cut levers, Kadee #5 couplers, stairway light fixture castings, prototypical variation in marker light placement and free rolling trucks of various designs. Artwork shown here is preliminary and subject to improvement by our crack development staff.

Amtrak Transfer Cabooses. Amtrak became a major owner of right-of-way during the organizing of Conrail. Passenger traffic was king on Penn Central’s “Northeast Corridor” between Washington D.C. and Boston so turning over ownership of the line to Amtrak seemed to be the best solution. With that, Amtrak assembled a sizeable fleet of maintenence-of-way equipment, including cabooses of NYC/PC ancestry are part of that fleet. We are doing two road numbers for this run and as you can see, they look quite different from each other. This is because no two of the prototypes are lettered alike!