C&NW Caboose's
Feb 5, 2019 20:16:57 #
These are from the spring of 2005. I had a Canon G-3 camera and thought I really had something.
One afternoon I was on a jobsite and received a call that I should go to Boone, Iowa at the Boone & Scenic Valley rail yard the next day. There were two caboose's that needed to be loaded and hauled to a rail car facility in Plymouth, Minnesota. Well, that sounded like fun so I told one of the younger guys I was working with what was up. His response was "what's a caboose"?
With no more information than that I and another driver arrived in Boone ready for work. The crane operator assigned had lifter a box car at one time so he got the job. The railroad gave us two guys to sort of help.
The pictures are in order as we began to get the first caboose ready to lift. But first we had to clean it out. Iowa Blackie, King of the HoBo's was living in it.
The chimney stack had to be removed from the roof then the crane hooked up as the body was separated from the trucks. I was going to haul the body, the other driver would carry the trucks and provide encouragement. He had several years experience with flatbed hauling, I had just two months.
Once free the operator swung the body over my trailer and then I realized that the undercarriage was not flat and we could not set it on the trailer. We needed cribbing blocks, lots of them. After much trial and digging around the B&SV found some blocks we could use.
I had a permit for overwidth but not for over height. After we finally got the body loaded and chained down I found that the load was 14ft tall, legal height is 13'6".
All was well until we were one exit prior to the Plymouth exit and unexpected road construction had an underpass at 14 ft clearance. We had to exit. No GPS then and too much traffic to stop and read a map. We did get back on the freeway after wondering around lost for some time. We found the place, got unloaded and made it back to Des Moines by 11pm. In the morning we would move the second caboose, only this time we had it all figured out and it went without a hitch.
One afternoon I was on a jobsite and received a call that I should go to Boone, Iowa at the Boone & Scenic Valley rail yard the next day. There were two caboose's that needed to be loaded and hauled to a rail car facility in Plymouth, Minnesota. Well, that sounded like fun so I told one of the younger guys I was working with what was up. His response was "what's a caboose"?
With no more information than that I and another driver arrived in Boone ready for work. The crane operator assigned had lifter a box car at one time so he got the job. The railroad gave us two guys to sort of help.
The pictures are in order as we began to get the first caboose ready to lift. But first we had to clean it out. Iowa Blackie, King of the HoBo's was living in it.
The chimney stack had to be removed from the roof then the crane hooked up as the body was separated from the trucks. I was going to haul the body, the other driver would carry the trucks and provide encouragement. He had several years experience with flatbed hauling, I had just two months.
Once free the operator swung the body over my trailer and then I realized that the undercarriage was not flat and we could not set it on the trailer. We needed cribbing blocks, lots of them. After much trial and digging around the B&SV found some blocks we could use.
I had a permit for overwidth but not for over height. After we finally got the body loaded and chained down I found that the load was 14ft tall, legal height is 13'6".
All was well until we were one exit prior to the Plymouth exit and unexpected road construction had an underpass at 14 ft clearance. We had to exit. No GPS then and too much traffic to stop and read a map. We did get back on the freeway after wondering around lost for some time. We found the place, got unloaded and made it back to Des Moines by 11pm. In the morning we would move the second caboose, only this time we had it all figured out and it went without a hitch.
Feb 5, 2019 20:21:53 #
Feb 5, 2019 20:23:31 #
Feb 6, 2019 11:46:43 #
Why was that caboose being moved? Where end up? For what? Gotta be a story here.
Feb 7, 2019 01:37:26 #
Feb 19, 2019 20:19:32 #
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