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

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Bartlebaugh further explained that, after the caboose has been bought, moved, remodeled and delivered, there's very little expense involved. Most land owners—even when their site is in the middle of the woods—set their cabooses on a strip of track, which can be purchased from any railroad for next to nothing. This means there's no worry, work or cost for a foundation.

There's also little problem for the caboose owner who either doesn't have land or who would rather (say, for travel reasons) stick to the regular working sidings.

"The railroads in this area—and many others—are kind of funny," Chuck explains. "If they can't have a business that brings them rail profits, then they'd just as soon let the tracks rust as make money renting them for something like this.

"Often, though, such 'unprofitable' tracks are sold, and there are hundreds of privately held sidings like this one which the owners are more than willing to rent cheap. As I said before, to keep four cabooses here costs me a total of only $15 a month."

I had to admit that Chuck's converted cabooses were sounding better all the time . . . but what was it really like to live in one of these retired railroad cars? Chuck answered that one by pointing out the comfortable features of his own caboose.

Twin beds just inside (one on the left and one on the right) the "front" door double as sofas. Above the beds are book shelves and the space underneath each sofa is used for storage.

The middle of Bartlebaugh's car boasts the genuine, original, old-timey potbellied stove with which the caboose was originally outfitted. "All the lanterns came with this car, too," says Chuck, "but it's now virtually impossible to find a caboose with all its interior trappings complete."

My host went on to say that the potbellied stove is great for breaking the chill but that he prefers to use a 1,500 BTU electric space heater to keep his retired railroad car cozy in sub-zero weather. "There are two reasons for this," he said, "One is that the fumes from the stove are potentially dangerous and the other is that it's just too much trouble to feed the coal stove all night. The little potbellied burner is a lot of fun, though, and quite handy for warming the car during the fall, spring and on mild winter days."

Directly across from the stove, Bartlebaugh has hung a table from the ceiling on chains. When traveling with his home, he unhooks the chains and allows the table to drop down against the wall.

Chuck has tucked a mini-kitchen into one far corner of his caboose's main room and a desk into the other. The kitchen is complete with a bottled-gas stove and hot and cold running water (fed from the same kind of portable tank that is commonly used in large boats). Cupboards for cooking utensils line the wall above the sink and a small television set is built in over the desk.

A pair of louvered swinging doors between the corner kitchen and the desk open into the cupola or "back room" section of Chuck's rolling home. The bathroom, with shower, is enclosed on one side of the hall beneath the cupola and Chuck's refrigerator and main storage space is on the other.

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