An End Ride Into History

Before long the 10,000 cabooses in the United States will ride into railroad history, to be seen only in museums beside steam engines and Pullman cars. The end is near for those cupola-topped carriages that traditionally have marked the tail end of freight trains--now victims of automation, economics and the railroads’ desire to reduce the size of train crews.

This year the United Transportation Union, representing conductors and brakemen, sought legislation in 25 states, including California, to require trains to have cabooses. Everywhere the efforts failed. A campaign to save the caboose through collective bargaining had failed earlier.

As the railroads see it, they don’t need cabooses anymore. The safety role that they once played by enabling crew members to scan a train for malfunctions is now done by electronic sensors. Nor are cabooses used anymore to provide bunk space for the crews. Furthermore, cabooses cost $80,000 apiece, and half again that much for servicing and maintenance every year.

For its part, the union fears that the elimination of cabooses is the harbinger of further reductions in train crews, which of course means fewer jobs. The union says that the railroads are compromising safety. The railroads point to the safety records of trains without cabooses to counter the claim. A quarter of long-distance freight trains already run without them.

This would be nothing more than a parochial labor-management dispute were it not for the lore of railroading that is part of American culture and history. Generations have stood at crossings, counting boxcars of passing trains and awaiting the friendly wave of conductor or brakeman as the caboose finally flashed by--smoke streaming from the rusted chimney pipe, the warning lantern blinking on the back railing.

Soon the last car of a freight train will just be the last car, indistinguishable from all the rest. A few of the old cabooses will find new life as trendy hamburger stands, but the rest will live only in pictures and in memory.