Pssst! ... Hey Kid, Wanna Buy a Caboose?

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"Anyhow, when I was still in high school my girl and I would come down to the tracks and talk to the guys that ran the local freight. There was an old wooden depot here then, and the whole scene was interesting to me. After a while we got to bringing some wine and chicken with us to share with the train crew and, in return, the crew would let us ride the freight on the one-day round trips. It was different and a lot of fun.

"Once, when I mentioned that I needed a place to live, one of the crew suggested that I buy a scrapped caboose. I don't know if he was joking or not, but the idea sounded great."

Shortly thereafter, Chuck graduated from high school and began looking for a caboose ("I mean I really looked!") but it took him from 1965 until 1967 to locate one.

"After all the letters I had written, all the scrap yards I had gone to and all the people I had talked with, it really was kind of odd how I happened to get my first caboose," Chuck recalls. "I was at a sports car race in Mossport, Canada and casually mentioned that I was looking for a caboose . . . and a guy I didn't even know said he knew where I could get one.

"It was really strange, kind of like walking down the street and having some character come up and whisper, 'Psst . . . hey kid, want to buy a caboose?" This guy seemed typically shady but, not having anything to lose, I followed his directions to a scrap yard in St. Thomas, Ontario and—sure enough—there was a caboose. As a matter of fact, I'd found eight of 'em.

"At that time, scrap dealers could purchase the cars, burn off the wood and salvage the metal for a profit. This particular dealer was willing to let me have one of his eight . . . as long as I took the other seven and paid him $350 each. Since I didn't have even the money to buy one—let alone eight—I accepted . . . which meant that I had to do something. "

What Chuck did was to place an advertisement in the London and Toronto papers offering six cabooses, as great little cottages, for only $350 apiece . . . the same price he had to pay for the cars. An amazing number of people answered the ad and, in no time at all, Bartlebaugh had sold all six. With $2,100 in his hand, the dealer let Chuck have the other two cars on credit.

"At last I had my caboose," Chuck remembers. "I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with it, but I had it . . . and one to spare. Both were in excellent condition, and getting the railroad to pull them was no problem. Crossing the border back into the United States did, however, present some difficulty."

Chuck, it seems, had made the mistake of painting one caboose (the one he still lives in) before leaving Canada. When the Customs officials' saw the bright red car, they decided that it was still good enough to qualify as railroad equipment and demanded a $1,000 deposit before they'd release it. There was no way that Chuck could convince them differently.

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