When I was 5 years old, my dad met a Frisco man on his bowling league who knew I loved trains, the fellow invited my mom and dad to bring me to Cherokee Yard to see some trains and to climb on and ride some trains. My parents cannot remember the mans name. My mom took this pic of me in the cupola of a 1200 with her Kodak 110 camera. About a year ago I asked my mom to find the old pic, because I was curious as to what number caboose I was actually in that day. She found the pic, gave it to me, but the number is not shown. I decided to search all the caboose images I could find, to try to figure it out. The original pic is much sharper than my cell phone image of it that you see here.
From the image, I can tell this is the 2 window side. I could see a few features like the two unusually spaced vent stacks on the roof, the longer than normal tool box below, and the tiny white data lines under the S in the "Ship it" logo (hard to see in the poor scan). I searched many many images, but could not find a match. By process of elimination I narrowed the search down to about 6 numbers, and waited patiently for more images to surface. A day or two ago on ebay a pic of Caboose 1232 showed up and all the fingerprints from my original image were matched up with an image of 1232. I was pretty excited to finally know the number of the caboose !
The image above is one of only 2 images of 1232 that I have seen, the other is a platform shot. The image above is on ebay now, and I hope to get it and add it to the archive. Now here is the really cool part ! caboose 1232 just happens to be the caboose that was on display at Seneca Missouri, and I have her now in my collection ! That was icing on the cake, its just neat that I have the caboose that I was riding so many years ago in Cherokee Yard. By the time 1232 was retired, the long tool/battery box had been removed, so I didn't think it was a match....I just thought it never had a tool box. Now I can see where it was cut off from underneath. Fun stuff for sure !
Very cool. Tonight I will check to see if I am in possession of any other images of this caboose. Charlie
Talk about going full circle...it's possible that she was still wearing the Ashland Red scheme in your mom's photo before BN painted her green. Last time I saw her was on 7/14/79 while riding the QLA out of Memphis, we passed a southbound in siding at Critco & the 1232 was on the rear. That hogger was going so fast I barely got the waycar #, once the conductor in #1203 radioed we were off the bridge he didn't back off #444's throttle till we got to Black Rock. I was sitting behind the brakeman & he was keeping the hogger informed on the score of the Cardinals game he was listening to on his boombox. Ah the good ole days on the Frisco, no big deal to have friendly hogger or conductor invite you up in the cab to ride around a bit. Today it's a federal offense, literally. Bid high Paul!!! Roger
