Many years ago, the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum went to our friends at the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway requesting a caboose. The "J" responded by donating EJ&E #510 to the museum, only it came to North Judson painted for the Bessemer & Lake Erie (where it had been leased for a number of years) as their #1989; it's B&LE red paint faded to pink. The museum decided we "needed a little red caboose" so the Bessemer & Lake Erie scheme was retained for that first repainting. Through the years, the caboose has been repainted more than once. In the first photo below, the caboose is seen trailing a HVRM passenger train on May 3rd, 2014 wearing its B&LE lettering. In the very latest repainting, the B&LE herald was omitted, as can be seen in the second photo from 9/30/17. Recently the caboose needed to be repainted again, and the museum decided to finally return the caboose to its original orange scheme as EJ&E #510. Our painting "guru" Mark, has already started the work as can be seen in the third photo.

Les

Whether you go with red or orange, that caboose looks like a good place to make some stiff coffee on a winter evening. If you park it where the tower can't see you, it would make a good hide out, and now you want to make it easy on the eyes, too. Go for it, gents.

Sammy -

When I first joined the museum and before we started running passenger trains, the B&LE 1989/EJ&E 510 was our "eating lunch" car. The stove was operable and used to heat hot dogs or stew or chili or whatever. The one place you couldn't sit in the caboose, were the seats right across from the stove. Too damn hot! I imagine, with a little cleanup, the stove would still be great for making some good stiff coffee.

Les

Les,

It’ll be nice to see it painted in one of its previous schemes. My preference would’ve been as delivered but I’d be happy with any.

Ours is a sister to yours, came via B&LE somehow but we have no idea which one it was. I have it narrowed down to four but that’s as far as I can get. Looks like yours was converted from propane generator to Spicer drive/generator/battery power, too. One of my future tasks is to service the generator for charging the battery.

Please do post with more photos a you go.

We have her sister 1987 on the Middletown & Hummelstown RR. She is serviceable and used on our "Sundae Caboose Trains".

On an extremely hot and humid day, Mark continued the work on EJ&E #510 as can be seen by his photo of the caboose sitting outside HVRM's Shop. He finally said he was "baked" and called it a day.

Les

The EJ&E's 500-series International Car Company cabooses are well preserved, with the railroad preservation index showing that 34 are preserved or in use with short lines or industries. https://www.sites.google.com/site/railwaypreservationphotoindex/by-railroad/elgin-joliet-eastern. A unusual, and perhaps unique, feature of the EJ&E's cabooses was the retrofitting of air conditioning in the 1970s- something even applied to the wood cars that remained at that time. Only a handful of the remaining cars retain their air conditioners.

EJ&E 510, having retained its side vents and lost the AC, is close to the as-delivered configuration for this group of cars. At delivery, these cars wore outlined white lettering with the "Chicago Outer Belt" logo as shown here: http://rr-fallenflags.org/eje/eje-c511ads.jpg

Thomas -

What's amazing are the different schemes these 50 cars have worn since that initial 1956 scheme. White lettering outlined/white lettering not outlined/green lettering/different shades of orange paint/"Chicago Outer Belt" herald/"J" herald/both heralds/no heralds at all. I have even seen photos of ELGIN, JOLIET & EASTERN RY. CO. spelled out instead of the the simple E. J. & E. letters! Everything "Standard" at first and then nothing standard. It's almost like whenever the cars came in needing new paint, the shop forces were told "do whatever you like!"

Les

I don’t know about air conditioning and I’m not a EJ&E expert, but as built, the louvers were for the 1KW propane generator and battery - the lower for pulling in cooling air for the generator and the upper to exhaust that air and as a vent for the 12v battery pack. There was also a propane stove for heat, a hot plate and fridge. Handling the propane was a pain not to mention a bit dangerous and the system was eventually removed. We still have the bottle racks and regulator on ours but the hinged cast aluminum covers were long gone before we owned it. That’s a detail I’d like to have back. Power was then supplied to the battery pack via a body mounted generator and spicer drive. The fridge was replaced by an ice box and the stove replaced with a coal stove. HVRM’s is likely the same.

Here is a photo of a car with Elgin Joliet & Eastern spelled out: http://rr-fallenflags.org/eje/eje-c539ads.jpg

I think HVRM would get a good response if it reached out to the EJ&E fans and veterans for a history of these cars. Much of the HVRM collection worked in the mills or served the mills of East Chicago and Gary, and the story of the EJ&E cabooses would give an insight into that story.

I would guess that the EJ&E painting and lettering would be tightly controlled, as were many aspects of US Steel operations - but that is something that doing the research would answer.

The Steel Car Shop in Joliet (which I think is still standing) was building freight cars from scratch into the early 2000s for the Gary Works. They also built large numbers of boxcars and hoppers from kits after WWII. The only survivors among this group are on the Fillmore & Western in Southern California, which is closed as the current operators lost their lease to operate over county-owned trackage.

Thomas -

Thanks very much for posting the link to the photo of the caboose with the complete ELGIN, JOLIET & EASTERN RY. CO. spelled out. The photo I saw of a caboose with the full lettering spelled out was caboose # 532. So at least two of the cabooses were so lettered!

Also, when I mentioned in my previous post about the many differences on various EJ&E cabooses, I omitted that some had "Roman" type lettering and numbers and others had "Block" type. Makes my head spin!

Les

Need some help!!! Mark has put the road number on both sides and the cupola of EJ&E caboose #510, as can be seen in this shot taken earlier today from a doorway in our Shop building. He says he needs a good color closeup shot of the "CHICAGO OUTER BELT" square herald; the one with E. J. & E. RY. through the center of the herald. Is there anyone out there who might have taken such a photo?

Thanks!

Les

Is this the style monogram you’re looking for?
http://railrelicstoday.com/trainpics/hacks/eje.jpg

Eric -

Yes, that's the one. Mark is looking for a closeup of that particular herald/monogram/logo.


Les

That’s as close to a straight on view of that monogram, as applied by the railroad, as I’ve seen on the web. At the bottom of that page is a link to contact the guy - you might be able to get a higher resolution copy that you can blow up for better detail.

I almost chased this down a year ago when we were first considering painting our caboose but we went another direction. Too bad, though. I would have had the complete, full sized artwork for you.

I wonder if anyone holds any old EJ&E paper. Finding the drawing would be a score. I doubt you’d have any luck whatsoever with CN.

[edit] Forgot the link to the page. Contact at the bottom.
http://railrelicstoday.com/rr-hacks.html