MTH 3077243 O SOU Bay-Window Caboose – Your Source for Gaming Essentials* Trains

Description

This is MTH 30-77243 O SOU Bay-Window Caboose. Bay window caboose, Southern. Caboose number: 555799. To celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2012, the Norfolk Southern Railway painted 20 freight diesels in paint schemes honoring its predecessor railroads. Eleven of the prototype schemes were applied to EMD SD70ACe locomotives at Progress Rail Services shops in Muncie, IN. Norfolk Southern employees at its Chattanooga, TN and Altoona, PA shops applied the remaining nine heritage schemes to General Electric ES44AC diesels.
As freight cars grew taller, observing a train from the cupola of a caboose became increasingly difficult. In the wooden car era, another problem with cupola cabooses was sagging roofs. In an effort to solve these problems, the Akron, Canton & Youngstown railroad introduced the bay window caboose in 1923. (In fact, however, bay windows had been used on New York & Harlem Railroad passenger cars as far back as the 1850s, to enable conductors to better anticipate station arrivals.)

In 1930 the Baltimore & Ohio became the first railroad to adopt the bay window style as its standard caboose; it never purchased another cupola model. During the same decade, the Milwaukee Road and the Northern Pacific built substantial bay window fleets.

But it was immediately after World War II that the bay window design became widespread, as car heights increased significantly and cupolas became less and less useful. As with diesels and other modern freight cars, these postwar bay window cabooses were part of the shift away from customized, railroad-specific locos and cars toward standardized designs produced in large quantities on efficient assembly lines. Key builders of bay window cabooses included International Car Company and American Car & Foundry.

High quality, traditionally sized RailKing Freight Cars provide detailed bodies and colorful paint schemes for the O Gauge railroader. MTH makes an enormous variety of RailKing Freight Cars, including many different car types and roadnames. No matter what era or part of the country you are modeling, RailKing is sure to have something for you.

While companion cabooses were not created by the Norfolk Southern the caboose having been largely extinct since the 1980s these cabooses depict what might have been. They can serve as a fitting complement to our RailKing models of NS Heritage diesels, or simply a depiction of how your favorite Fallen Flag railroad might have painted a caboose in the latter part of the 20th century.

Its key features are:
Intricately detailed durable ABS body
Metal wheels and axles
Caboose interiors with overhead lighting
Die-cast 4-wheel trucks
Operating die-cast metal couplers
Colorful, attractive paint schemes
Decorative brake wheels
Separate metal handrails
Fast-angle wheel sets
Needle-point axles
Unit measures: 10 1/2” x 2 1/4” x 3 1/2”
Operates on O-31 curves

Condition: Factory New (C-9)
Operational Status: Functional
Original Box: Yes (P-9)

Manufacturer: MTH
Model Number: 30-77243
Road Name: Southern Railway (SOU)

Scale/Era: O Modern
Model Type: Freight Cars

The Trainz SKU for this item is P11822309.

Trainz Product Id: 11822309