Bluford Shops - 99211 - Caboose, Transfer - Nebraska Central - 501

Specific Item Information: Spring Creek Exclusive N Scale Bluford Shops Short Body Bay Window Caboose Nebraska Central

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: NCRC was born in 1993 when Union Pacific leased out a number of branchlines in Nebraska. The Nebraska Central runs 340 miles of line including trackage rights on a section of UP’s North Platte to Omaha mainline. A few of the current lines are former BNSF. The section of UP trackage rights from Grand Island northeast to Columbus then southeast to David City form the spine of the Nebraska Central. Northbound branches run from Grand Island as far as Ord, Central City to Palmer, and three branches from Columbus running as far north as Spalding, Albion, and Norfolk respectively. NCRC also has their own line from Columbus to David City (south of the generally parallel UP) with seven cities along the way plus two on a branch running east from David City.

Grain is a big part of NCRC’s traffic base but steel, agri-chemicals and ethanol also contribute. The railroad is owned by Rio Grande Pacific Corp.

The 20 unit diesel fleet includes the following models: GP38-3, SD38-2, GP38mac, GP9R, SD45, and SD40-2. The red paint scheme is a nod to the University of Nebraska.

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.