Question on Arnold Rapido/Revell (and whoever else did these) trucks

[Missaberoad]

More important then steps would be good handrails to climb up on the deck.
Flatcars are really awkward to climb on and ride and we avoid them like the plague at work.

...and railings across the ends to stop the conductor/brakeman from falling off when the hoghead lets the slack bunch up... 

[brokemoto]

What was oulawed in most states were "Widowmakers"; cars with no end platforms and side entry. 

Also, many states outlawed the use of "Bobber" cabooses. 

The use of such a car on a short line would likely indicate a logging road where the conductor was more of a timber boss who needed to have cables and other gear to secure logs on the train. 

On a normal short line some accommodation for passengers and way freight LCL would be more likely needed.

Again, thanks everyone for the informative replies and photographs. 

The quoted reply raises several questions.

Would a caboose that had at least one door on an end platform but other doors not on end platforms be in compliance?  Specifically, would the B-mann boom tender used as a caboose be in compliance?  The B-mann car has a door at one end, where there is no platform but does have a door on the other end where there is some thirty-seven feet of what could be characterised as "platform space".  It does appear that there are some cast-on handrails on the side of the cabin on the B-mann car, but adding a short handrail would not hurt, especially when you consider the statement of the railroad crew member from Canada about what happens when the engineer "lets the slack bunch up" and that the thing is awkward to mount.

The Arnold car is clearly in compliance, as there is platform space on one end and some twenty-three feet of what could be characterised as "platform space" on the other.  It appears that handrailings should be added, however, thanks to the comments from our Friend from Canada.  The comments from our Friend from Canada also explain why idler flats have railings.

The McCloud River caboose in the photograph is similar to the Arnold car, although it does appear to be somewhat shorter.  As the premise of the short line portion of my pike allows for passenger trains to carry mail and express as well as a freight house that handles LCL traffic.  Indeed, the only real reason that the passenger trains are still running is to provide commuter service mostly for the workers at the bicycle factory, but more due to the high volume of mail and express traffic.  The night freight train runs five days per week and carries an LCL car.  The LCL car is parked at the freight house during the day.

I did buy some Father Nature shells that are so-called "drover cabooses".  I could use those on freight trains to carry passengers that wanted to ride, but they would have to be local passengers, as there would be no connecting train for them at Short Creek Junction.   The regular passenger trains do connect at Short Creek Junction with passenger trains run by the prototypes.

I am trying to get my equipment to say "short line" as soon as you look at it, which is why I considered the  boom cars in the first place.

I do use on B-mann bobber caboose, so I will have to find out if Maryland had banned them by the mid-1950s.

[nkalanaga]

I wonder if the prototype for the "bobber on a flatcar" model, wherever it was, was a result of the ban on bobbers?  The railroad had these caboose bodies, and couldn't run them as they were, so repurposed them?

[brokemoto]

The railroad had these caboose bodies, and couldn't run them as they were, so repurposed them?

That might explain it.  Most short lines had to be more tight-fisted than usual, as their balance sheet was pretty thin, as a rule.  You have this old flatcar laying around that is on archbar trucks, thus banned in interchange service as it is.  The thing is old, anyhow.  Even if it is on Andrews trucks, which were still allowed, those things were old and you did not want another railroad to repair or replace them as it saw fit and send you the bill.  Again the car is old, anyhow, and the short line would rather do any repairs on its own, as it could get away with patchwork and jury rigging.

So ya' take this hyar caboose ya' kain't run as it is, ya' take this old flatcar due for the scrap heap soon, patch it back together, pull the body offen the old caboose, put it on that thar' eight wheeled flatcar and BOOM-0!  Y'ain't gotta' buy no new caboose y'ain't got no money fer nohow.

[randgust]

What really got a lot of the bobbers was using steam pushers by the 1920's, and if you didn't have a steel frame you had to cut the caboose off, put on the helper, cut the caboose on the end, etc.   You needed a good solid, heavy caboose to put up with that.   There also seem to have been individual state bans on bobbers (at least New York and Ohio), maybe more, but I'm not sure about a national ban.

And trust me, man, do they ride rough.  Strasburg's ex-PRR crabbed, banging back and forth in the gauge, along with the usual rough slack action you'd expect.  I've ridden regular cabooses, this was everything I'd ever heard about them.

Somewhere I've seen a picture of a logging caboose just the way you described, a standard flatcar with the remains of another caboose more or less tossed on it.... if I can find it I'll let you know, but I swear I've seen something like that somewhere.    Logging cabooses really had no rules.

As far as for shortlines?   Usually secondhand cabooses cast-off from Class 1's, wooden.   Very common.  ANd if they were a common-carrier, subject to the same ICC safety rules as everyone else, like the side-door ban, although 'baggage doors' could still exist as an LCL car.  What made the side-door cars so dangerous was no end platforms; i.e. no other way onto the car except the side.   ATSF had a lot of those.  http://s1122.photobucket.com/user/flash7210/media/824922F5-1CE3-44CE-B821-53681C967285-282-0000000AEC993699_zps42c82d60.jpg.html

Edit:  Kramer Adams "Logging Railroads of the West" has an exquisitely interesting shot of what looks like a wood, 34' or shorter caboose body tossed on top of at least a 40' flatcar, no end steps, just an inner and outer set of stirrups.  Car body is in the center, not on the end.   Obviously a caboose body thrown on a standard flatcar.

The other car I was thinking about was a local shortline road's snowplow/flanger - where they literally built what looks like an outhouse with a stove on it on one end of the flatcar with the plow mounted on the opposite end.  The same railroad - Sheffield & Tionesta, used secondhand passenger cars from the D&H gravity railroad, a wood bobber caboose from PRR, and an even older bobber without a cupola.   Railroad ran from 1900-1942.  They were using a pair of wood, open-vestibule, ex-PRR passenger cars up until the day of abandonment.

[brokemoto]

Sheffield & Tionesta Railroad ran from 1900-1942.  They were using a pair of wood, open-vestibule, ex-PRR passenger cars up until the day of abandonment.

How did you abandon a railroad in 1942?   I do not disbelieve you that it was abandoned, it just seems strange to me that the War Production Board would have allowed it.  There must have been no customers on the line of any value to the war effort. 

I was surprised to learn that railroads actually scrapped locomotives during that era (Buffalo and Susquehanna Atlantics, for three).  During that war, the railroads were using anything that would roll or move.  I have seen photographs of Class I trains with cars that had arch bar trucks, which had been banned in interchange by 1939.  As a rule, if it  moved, the railroad found a use for it.

[Missaberoad]

How did you abandon a railroad in 1942?   I do not disbelieve you that it was abandoned, it just seems strange to me that the War Production Board would have allowed it.  There must have been no customers on the line of any value to the war effort. 

I was surprised to learn that railroads actually scrapped locomotives during that era (Buffalo and Susquehanna Atlantics, for three).  During that war, the railroads were using anything that would roll or move.  I have seen photographs of Class I trains with cars that had arch bar trucks, which had been banned in interchange by 1939.  As a rule, if it  moved, the railroad found a use for it.

Seems like the perfect time to tear up unused rail lines. That would be alot of scrap metal...

[nkalanaga]

That also explains the scrapped locomotives.  If the thing had been sitting for a while, and was impractical, or unaffordable, to repair, scrap it and donate the unsalvageable parts to the war effort.  Most of the locos scrapped during that period were worth more as scrap than as motive power.

[randgust]

On the S&T:  Their engine terminal, yard, and major shipper was flooded out by the creation of the Tionesta Reservoir in 1940.  The only shipper left was the Mayburg Chemical plant - inbound chemical wood for charcoal and acetone production, outbound tank cars of acetone.

My fathers lumber mill was the source of most of the inbound chemical wood.  He fought the abandonment and even made an attempt to buy the railroad to keep the customer running.   He was also an advisor to the war production board for hardwood lumber.   The ICC weighed the evidence in 1942 and decided that the scrap rail was worth more to the war effort than trucking the acetone 10 miles to a railhead.   In the end, all chemical wood production of acetone was obsolete anyway.   The chemical wood plant closed shortly after, right in the middle of the war.   https://www.newspapers.com/clip/901240/mayburg_chemical_co_closing/

The railroad was about as 'down and out' as any depression-era shortline you'd ever see by then and looked like every model railroad caricature of the depression era.   The famous narrow-gauge photographer, Robert Richardson, was from that area, and documented the railroad before he was drafted and sent overseas.   The Denver Public Library has an online library of shots he took during the last years of operation. This was great stuff I just discovered a couple years ago, here's a sample, using the little 'new' Baldwin 4-4-0 #11: 
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15330coll22/id/77208
Yes, that's dual-gauge track, the narrow-gauge Tionesta Valley Railway also came into Sheffield, it ran up until about 1948. TVR had a HONEY of a narrow-gauge, side-door caboose about the size of a bobber that was preserved by a private purchaser:  http://www.ctamachinery.com/photo-essays-old-website/tionesta-valley-railroad.html

Back to S&T:  If you're a fan of the Yosemite Valley operation, you've got NOTHING over the S&T as they look rather similar in equipment and region.    I've modeled some of the equipment, and often wondered what would have happened if my father had been successful in buying it.  I still fish in the valley myself and use the remaining grades as walking paths.

It was one of those Pennsylvania logging railroads that was 'just barely' a common-carrier, and was very much run like the infamous Petticoat Junction toward the end.   The two passenger cars were shedding paint and swaybacked the last years.  They still had one operational 2-6-0 and a 4-4-0 out of about 11 locomotives at the peak.   They only every bought one locomotive new, and no rolling stock.   The nickname, by the way, was the "Slow & Tiresome".