WRM has almost finished restoration of Sacramento Northern 1632, a wooden caboose originally built as a box car for the Western Pacific by Pullman in 1916. Western Pacific converted it into caboose in 1937. It was sold to Sacramento Northern in 1956, and eventually was donated to the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in 1984. WRM acquired it in a trade in 2005.

We have restored it to its appearance as of the late 1950's. The oil heater was removed and replaced with a coal stove (it's hard to buy coal in the San Francisco area!). The electric lights were removed and replaced with new kerosene conductor's lamps made by Aladdin. The Microphor toilet was removed and replaced with a non-retention toilet.

Here is a view of the caboose and other equipment being prepared for display in our car barn as part of an interurban-era freight train. This is a unique exhibit - a Sacramento Northern locomotive and caboose on the original SN main line, with two freight cars from California electric railroads.

(Randy Hees will remember Oakland Antioch & Eastern 2002 as the flat car which his group restored at Railfair 1999 in Sacramento. WRM acquired it from CSRM in 2008.)

Here are better views of the other two cars in the group:

Central California Traction Co. 2001 (Holman, 1910)

Oakland Antioch and Eastern 2002 (Holman, 1911), one of the first revenue freight cars on the OA&E, which eventually became the Sacramento Northern.

Aside from the windmills visible behind the flat car, the scenery is virtually unchanged since the railroad opened in 1911.

I am primarily a West Virginia steam fan, but I can not help but be impressed by this and by the SN combine that was up some time back. Congratulations, and good luck at getting more wire up. . .

Wow! Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful work! Great bit of positive news for the season kick-off!

Beautiful work. Now there is a photo freight.

Ted.

I love electric box cabs! Great job there! The freight that trolley systems ran is out of the norm and should be displayed more often. (Yea, I know that they weren't the only systems to run boxcabs.)

Later!
Mr. Ed

But Mr. Ed, that's a steeple cab.....

I think I need to print out a couple of those photos just to show people who wonder why places like Philadelphia and Baltimore mandated non-standard-gauge trackage for their trolley/streetcar systems.

They were afraid (and by these photos, perhaps with some justification) of the (private) traction companies using their franchises to run on the city streets to run freight trains just like this up and down the city roads.

Let it be noted that, while the cities mentioned didn't want the trolley companies running freight trains on their streets, they had no such compunctions about the railroads. Both Philadelphia and Baltimore had plenty of street-running by the Pennsylvania, Reading and Baltimore & Ohio, even into the Conrail/CSX/NS eras.

Yes, and it can be said that the early experiences with these "tracks in the streets" was pretty much the basis for their seeing to it that the traction companies couldn't perpetuate the practice further than the railroads already had.