page_title: Caboose
section_title: Bay window
hierarchical_section_title: Caboose / Types / Bay window
caption_attribution_description: English: A bay window caboose on display at the Illinois Railway Museum Photo by Sean Lamb (User:Slambo), July 18, 2004
context_page_description: A caboose is a manned North American railroad car coupled at the end of a freight train. Cabooses provide shelter for crew at the end of a train, who were formerly required in switching and shunting, keeping a lookout for load shifting, damage to equipment and cargo, and overheating axles.
  Originally flatcars fitted with cabins or modified box cars, they later became purpose-built with projections above or to the sides of the car to allow crew to observe the train from shelter. The caboose also served as the conductor's office, and on long routes included accommodation and cooking facilities.
  A similar railroad car, the brake van, was used on British and Commonwealth railways. On trains not fitted with continuous brakes, brake vans provided a supplementary braking system, and they helped keep chain couplings taut.
  Cabooses were used on every freight train in the United States until the 1980s, when safety laws requiring the presence of cabooses and full crews were relaxed. Developments in monitoring and safety technology, such as lineside defect detectors and end-of-train devices, resulted in crew reductions and the phasing out of caboose cars.
context_section_description: In a bay window caboose, the crew monitoring the train sits in the middle of the car in a section of wall that projects from the side of the caboose. The windows set into these extended walls resemble architectural bay windows, so the caboose type is called a bay window caboose. This type afforded a better view of the side of the train and eliminated the falling hazard of the cupola. It is thought to have first been used on the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad in 1923, but is particularly associated with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which built all of its cabooses in this design starting from an experimental model in 1930. The bay window gained favor with many railroads because it eliminated the need for additional clearances in tunnels and overpasses.
  On the West Coast, the Milwaukee Road and the Northern Pacific Railway used these cars, converting over 900 roof top cabooses to bay windows in the late 1930s. Milwaukee Road rib-side bay window cabooses are preserved at New Lisbon, Wisconsin, the Illinois Railway Museum, the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad and Cedarburg, Wisconsin, among other places.
  The Western Pacific Railroad was an early adopter of the type, building their own bay window cars starting in 1942 and acquiring this style exclusively from then on. Many other roads operated this type, including the Southern Pacific Railroad, St. Louis – San Francisco Railway, Katy Railroad, Kansas City Southern Railway, the Southern Railway, and the New York Central Railroad.
  In the UK, brake vans are usually of this basic design: the bay window is known as a lookout or ducket.
caption: A bay window caboose at the Illinois Railway Museum
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