Manned ETD’s on the Southern Pacific

Yes, end-of-train-devices used to be manned by actual crewmen. A conductor and a rear brakeman, to be precise. But time, technology, and cost-cutting waits for no one.

SP caboose 1978, a C50-5 bay window caboose, at Salt Lake City, UT on July 1, 1985

This is the archetypal design and paint scheme  for SP cabooses since just after WWII.  But there were a few exceptions.

SP caboose 1741 at Ogden, UT in January 1973

In 1972 Southern Pacific repainted C40-6 Bay Window Caboose 1741 into an experimental paint scheme. It had a bright red body, natural aluminum roof, gray trucks and under-body.

One-of-a-kind SP caboose 1 at Ogden, UT on Feb. 18, 1984

The wildest caboose experiment took place in 1980.  SP’s only example of Class C-50-10, it was built from damaged C-50-3 #4401 in 1980, and painted to match ‘Orange Bird’ SD40 7342.  The frame length remained the same, but the body was shortened and it had no roof overhang.

A bolder lettering scheme on this side of SP caboose 1, shown at Oakland in 1982

Each side had different lettering and lettering placement.  No others were built because the  savings weren’t significant and SP management knew that cabooses would be phased out relatively soon.