(gentle music) - Everybody loves a caboose, don't they?

- Everybody does.

The last car on the train?

- [Geoffrey] Yeah.

- [Phil] Something to look for.

- [Geoffrey] But wait a minute, if you look for a caboose today, you'll be disappointed.

They were phased out years ago.

To many people, a modern freight train looks like an animal missing its tail.

Fortunately, you can still see plenty of cabooses at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois, home to one of the largest collections of historic railroad equipment in the country.

- It's called a marker light.

This is an air gauge.

These are signaling devices called fusees.

- [Geoffrey] And if there's one guy you want showing you around a train, it's Phil Hehn.

- Cabooses had lots of different names, depending on what railroad you worked for.

Sometimes they were a caboose, sometimes they were a cabin car, sometimes they were away car.

- [Geoffrey] This sunny looking caboose was built in 1942 and spent nearly a half century bringing up the rear of Union Pacific freight trains.

So what's the purpose of a caboose anyway?

- The caboose is the train crew's home away from home.

When they would get to their terminal, their destination, their caboose would be taken off the train.

- [Geoffrey] Yeah.

- Set on a sidetrack, they were done for the day, and then this is where they would take their meals, and it would also be where they would sleep.

These benches would turn into bunks.

There's compartments where they would keep their bedding and whatever else they needed.

- So the train crew traveled with the train.

- Train crew.

They didn't go home at night?

- No.

- [Geoffrey] But the caboose was much more than a place to sleep.

It was a home office on wheels where the conductor and one or more brakemen did a lot of work before and during the train's journey.

- The caboose was the conductor's office.

He needed to know how many cars were in the train.

He needed to know what was in those cars, where they were going, and what they were carrying.

- And so people think the engineer is the boss, the captain, right?

- [Phil] Yeah, he's not.

He's like the second in command, right?

He's doing his job up there up in the front of the train.

- [Geoffrey] And who's in command?

- [Phil] The conductor.

The conductor is the boss of the train.

That's why a lot of times the nickname for a conductor would have been the captain.

- [Geoffrey] In the earliest days of railroading, brakeman risked life and limb by manually cranking the brakes, rain or shine.

- [Phil] The brakeman was the guy that would run along the roofs of the cars.

And when the engineer would call for brakes to slow down, he had a brake club and they would jump from car to car and tighten down the hand brake.

- [Geoffrey] You're kidding.

- [Phil] No.

- [Geoffrey] On every car?

- On every car.

So if you had a real long train, you had more than one brakeman, obviously, because- - [Geoffrey] That's a dangerous job.

- [Phil] It was very dangerous.

And the train's in motion, don't forget.

- [Geoffrey] The job improved with the invention of air brakes, thanks to an engineer named George Westinghouse who patented the design.

Yes, that's the same Westinghouse who later made your refrigerator.

Another key role of the caboose?

To keep an eye out for any problems on the train, and there's one place with the best view in the house, the Cupola.

- [Geoffrey] The Cupola.

- [Phil] Right.

- [Geoffrey] Can you go up there?

- [Phil] Yes, you can.

Just watch your step getting up.

- This is awesome.

Okay.

Now, why would you have somebody up here?

- [Phil] Okay.

You would wanna sit and you would wanna face in the direction that the train was going.

- Okay, so the train's going this way.

- [Phil] Right.

You're looking for smoke coming from any of the wheels, sparks.

- So sometimes you would, like, literally stick your head out the window here and- - [Phil] Right, right.

And you're also listening for strange noises.

- Uh-huh.

- [Phil] And you know, back in the 30s, when hobos were moving all about the country.

- Ah, yeah.

- You'd watch for people climbing on or climbing off.

- What's it like when the train's going 60 miles an hour and you're up here rocking and rolling?

- [Phil] Well, if you're on a good railroad with good track, it's gonna be a smooth ride.

- [Geoffrey] Oh, okay.

- [Phil] Otherwise, you're gonna be rocking and rolling.

- Well, and they've got a lot of things to grab onto up here.

- [Phil] Oh, absolutely.

- [Geoffrey] Yeah.

I think if I were riding a caboose, I'd stay up here the whole time.

By the 1980s, railroads phased out cabooses, replacing them with electronic gizmos called FREDs.

That stands for flashing rear-end device.

It was part of a broader shift toward automated monitoring and smaller crews.

So who's doing that job that the conductor did?

- There's an engineer and a conductor.

- There's a conductor still on the train.

- Still.

But they ride the locomotive now.

- [Geoffrey] In the locomotive.

- [Phil] Yeah.

- [Geoffrey] Though they quietly vanished, cabooses still charm train enthusiasts today.

They represent the most human part of a train, a reminder that the caboose wasn't just a piece of equipment, it was a workplace, a home away from home, and a way of life.

And by the way, what's the plural of caboose, cabeese?

- Cabeese.

Sure.

(gentle music)