Bluford Shops - 24161 - Caboose, Transfer - Finger Lakes - 202R

Specific Item Information: Bluford Shops. 24161 Transfer Caboose - Short Roof. Finger Lakes Rwy. Road number 202R.

Model Information: This model features: Fox Valley Metal wheels and Wire grabs and cut levers.

This short body bay window caboose design was developed by International Car and MoPac in the 1970s. Several other railroads used very similar cars. These were assigned to road service and were NOT transfer cabooses.

Prototype History: A transfer caboose looks more like a flat car with a shed bolted to the middle of it than it does a standard caboose. It is used in transfer service between rail yards or short switching runs, and as such, lacks sleeping, cooking or restroom facilities. The ends of a transfer caboose are left open, with safety railings surrounding the area between the crew compartment and the end of the car.

A recent variation on the transfer caboose is the "pushing" or "shoving" platform. It can be any railcar where a brakeman can safely ride for some distance to help the engineer with visibility at the other end of the train. Flatcars and covered hoppers have been used for this purpose, but often the pushing platform is a caboose that has had its windows covered and welded shut and permanently locked doors. CSX uses former Louisville & Nashville short bay window cabooses and former Conrail waycars as pushing platforms.

From Wikipedia

Road Name History: The Finger Lakes Railway is a 1995 spin-off from Conrail with a “T” shaped system running from Syracuse west to Victor and Canandaigua and Geneva south to Penn Yan and Watkins Glen, all in upstate New York. There is also a branch from Geneva to the former Seneca Army Depot, whose freight yard is used by FGLK for contract freight car storage. The track is former New York Central, Pennsylvania, and Lehigh Valley. The connection from Geneva south to Himrod is on trackage rights from Norfolk Southern. Total mileage at that point was 118.

The diesel fleet consisted of ten B23-7’s, one U23B, and a trio of rebuilt GP9’s. The official paint scheme is essentially New York Central’s lightening stripe scheme. A U23B is painted in a Lehigh Valley inspired Cornell Red. These have since been joined by more EMD second generation power. The traffic mix is very diverse including plastics, canned food, clay, grain, forest products, scrap, chemicals, steel, salt, sand, soda ash, paper, potash, fertilizer, beer, utility poles, and aluminum ingots.

In 2007, FGLK bought the connecting shortline Ontario Central from the Livonia Avon & Lakeville. The 13 mile OC connects with FGLK in Shortsville. The Finger Lakes Railway also runs a thriving passenger excursion business under the name Finger Lakes Scenic Railway on both the north-south and east-west lines.

Brand/Importer Information: Bluford Shops began in 2007 as a side project of two model railroad industry veterans, Craig Ross and Steve Rodgers. They saw a gap between road names available on N scale locomotives but not available on cabooses. They commissioned special runs of Atlas cabooses in Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia, Monon, Boston & Maine and Southern plus runs on Grand Trunk Western and Central Vermont on the MDC wooden cabooses. While these were in process, they began to develop their first all new tooling project, 86' Auto Parts Boxcars in double door and quad door editions in N scale. By January of 2008, Bluford Shops became a full time venture. Along with additional N scale freight cars and their own tooling for new cabooses, they have brought their own caboose line to HO scale. They also have their popular Cornfields in both HO and N. The future looks bright as they continue to develop new products for your railroad.

The town of Bluford in southern Illinois featured a small yard on Illinois Central's Edgewood Cutoff (currently part of CN.) The yard included a roundhouse, concrete coaling tower (which still stands) and large ice house. Reefer trains running between the Gulf Coast and Chicago were re-iced in Bluford. Things are more quiet now in Bluford with the remaining tracks in the yard used to stage hoppers for mines to the south and store covered hoppers. Intersecting the IC line in Bluford is Southern Railway's (currently NS) line between Louisville and St. Louis. Traffic on this single track line remains relatively heavy.