A few years ago BNSF donated a green Burlington Northern caboose to my home town. The town had it painted red & black and lettered for FRISCO. If FRISCO became BN in 1980, is it possible that the caboose was originally a FRISCO caboose before being repainted as a BN caboose? Anyone has access to the caboose. Is there anything I could look for to tell if it belonged to the FRISCO before the BN (& eventually, BNSF)?
The first thing I would do would be to look at the trucks. If they have SL-SF stamped on them odds are very good that it indeed was a Frisco caboose. This is not to say that the trucks might not have been changed but is a good way to check. The BN donated many of their cabooses to towns that were not actually Frisco cabooses. what is the number on the caboose and can you get a picture of it? Both of these would be of help. Bob Wintle Parsons, Ks.
Post a pic of the caboose carbody, its trucks, and any ownership plates that might be affixed to the body. We'll take a look and see what we can see to determine its origins. Ken
Lamar is a town that has a BN caboose that has a unreal frisco paint job on it. Just red with a black outline and black letters of a small coonskin. Another thing to look at is the Cupola. About 98% (rough guestamation) of the frisco caboose fleet had the cupola windows spaced instead of together. I can think of one with standard cupola windows and it has a picture I saw on here of 1277.
The Frisco also purchased a number of model CE-2 Santa FE cabooses built between 1927 and 1954. They were numbered in the 1100 series. Frisco caboose 1101 at Rogers, Arkansas was donated by the Burlington Northern in 1981. It is a CE-2 model that saw service on the Frisco.This caboose was recently touched up by the local National Railway Historical Society at the request of the Rogers Historical Museum.
Ethan: You are correct about the windows. Unfortunately that is why the readily available and reasonably priced Atlas caboose is incorrect for the Frisco. I believe only a couple of other roads ordered them new with this window configuration. The BN plated over some carbody windows and I believe some of the cupola windows making them centered. Reference caboose 1277 in the photo section as an example.
Both the 1400 and extended cupola style 1700 series of cabooses, built in the Frisco shops from 40 foot PS-1 boxcars, had their windows arranged into one opening in the cupola side. Since there were 26 cabooses in the 1700 series and 43 cabooses in the 1400 series plus the Bicentennial caboose (1776), cabooses with this style of cupola formed a signifiicant portion of the Frisco's fleet. Rich