(The following story by Josh Shaffer appeared on the News & Observer website on August 31, 2009.)
RALEIGH, N.C. — On a rusty track tangled with vines, nine cabooses wait in a lonely line, dreaming of whistles, conductors and a cross-country chug.
For years now, they’ve sat parked on a hill overlooking Capital Boulevard, listening to crickets, watching the Wednesday-night shag lessons at Reds of Raleigh, N.C., across the street.
Once they crossed the Rockies. Now they gather graffiti. Buy one, please, if you have $15,000 and a fondness for oversized obsolescence.
“These are special,” said David Thebodo, owner of Rail Merchants International. “I sold one in Atlanta recently and it became an ice cream shop.”
Cabooses represent the VHS tapes of the transportation world, a technology deader than Casey Jones. Consider that the crewmen who lived inside burned oil lamps for light and warmed themselves around coal-burning cast-iron stoves bolted to the floor.
They’re scarce, almost completely replaced by an impersonal electronic doodad known as a flashing rear-end device. Most likely, the last time you saw a caboose was inside a Little Golden Book, drawn with a toothy smile and nicknamed “Li’l Toot.”
For Thebodo, cabooses are precious history, wrapped up in lonesome whistles, midnight rides and other railroad lore. They’re cuter than blimps, and more fun to say.
His Iowa-based company rescues cabooses, freight cars and other decommissioned trains and stations them around the country, ready for sale.
“Every car I can save from the cutter’s torch, I consider a victory.”
When he parked nine in Raleigh along the CSX tracks, Thebodo thought N.C. State University might pick up one or two for tailgate parties, just as the Gamecocks do down at University of South Carolina.
Inside, those haughty fans sip cocktails amid marble countertops, brass chandeliers and hardwood floors. No bites so far from State, where tailgate parties are a bit more, well, earthy.
Thebodo notes that a Montana inn puts guests in cabooses. A model train enthusiast bought one as a shrine. A pediatric dentist in Alabama rescued a scrap-bound caboose for his waiting room.
Thebodo’s Web site, www.railmerchants.net, shows a gallery of customized cabooses made into backyard love nests, decorated with New Orleans jazz scenes and Harley Davidson regalia. They feature bathtubs and daybeds and wide-screen TVs. Click on the ‘cabooses’ link to see the Raleigh batch.
If he can, Thebodo will deliver them by rail, otherwise by truck. On the high end, they’ll run about $20,000, though the windows are often busted.
From their hillside perch, the cabooses look out over the industrial sprawl between downtown and the Beltline. You can’t help but pity their change in scenery.
The lead car bears the flag of British Columbia on its side, a Union Jack combined with a setting yellow sun, and its red and blue paint is faded from the dust of craggy mountains and the chill air of deep fjords.
AN INGLORIOUS FATE – SO FAR
The company they keep also has declined. Men who walk the CSX tracks from downtown tend to be drinkers, and their bottles poke out of the surrounding kudzu.
The cabooses are padlocked, or you could imagine a hobo climbing inside and living out the lyrics to “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” enjoying empty cars, blind brakemen and streams of whiskey.
But behind the curtain of graffiti, under the blanket of vegetation, each caboose still extends a hopeful staircase, inviting you to climb up and ride for a while, watching the world roll away behind you.