GAMBIER — Anthony Devore has plenty of room and trees on his Caves Road farm that he could build a tree house anywhere he wanted for his son to play in. Instead, he purchased a 1926 caboose used on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to serve as Anthony II’s playhouse.
For more than eight years, Devore has been wanting to purchase an old railroad caboose. His dream came to fruition earlier this week when it arrived in three pieces.
The caboose was actually purchased in January but Devore had a hard time finding a contractor that could make the move using his vision.
“Trying to find the right guy to know what I was talking about [was difficult]. I wasn’t speaking in a foreign language,” he said. “I finally called the right guy.”
The right guy was Brad Cunningham of United Aggregates, a division of United Precast Inc.
“He and I discussed this and planned this out real, real well. We looked at all the details and everything else and this all worked out beautifully,” he said. “I just had to find the right guy to do the job. I found him.”
Working with Cunningham, the two men, along with Cunningham’s crew, were able to make the move an easy success. The only disagreement between the two seemed to be the time it would take to complete the move. Cunningham expected it to take 10 to 12 hours. Devore was certain it could be done in about five, including the drive from Mount Vernon to Newcastle. Crews arrived in Newcastle just before 8 a.m. and were pulling out of Devore’s farm around 12:30 p.m.
As the caboose sits on two sets of wheels, or trucks as they are called in the railroad industry, Devore realized he had three unique pieces to move. The questionable part was moving the caboose off the trucks.
To do this, four cables were inserted into four different slots near the corners of the caboose. The cables were then connected to steel rods through the underside of the car.
To help make moving day easier, Devore decided to go ahead and build the railroad set up first.
“It’s easier to do it this way. Set up the bed over here (at Devore’s home), than it is to try to bring the track and everything over here (from the previous location) ’cuz you’ll spend hours doing that.”
His neighbors, Bob and Rich Burwell prepared the site for the caboose.
“They came down here and dug the bed out there and poured the gravel in and smoothed it all up. And then we took and set the plates down and measured it all out to the right width and drilled some pilot holes and spiked it down,” he said.
In addition to the convenience of having the platform prepared, doing this work ahead of time was also a matter of saving some cash.
“At the hourly rate these guys are being paid, you don’t want them sitting around for like eight or 10 hours while you are trying to put the bed down,” Devore said. “It’s just easier to make point B complete and then we can just come in here and set three pieces back down and go on about your business.”
While railroad ties are rather plentiful, finding the track and plates to hold it in place was no easy task.
“That’s kind of hard to find,” Devore said about acquiring actual railroad track. “I got that off of a guy that had some of it laying around. It’s kind of hard to get that stuff nowadays.”
The caboose comes complete with a full kitchen, toilet and shower as well as enough bedding space for four people.
“When this was built in 1926, they used it for the guys that worked on the railroad,” Devore said. “They would get on there like on a Monday and they would ride maybe a week or two nonstop working. They’d work every day and if they needed something they’d stop and get it fixed or whatever needed to be done. They had some sleepers in there and a heater right in the middle of it. That’s basically what it was used for was for the workers to sleep in and have a place to relax and eat when they weren’t working.”
To make easier access to the rail car, Devore plans to attach two decks to the rear which overlooks a pond and an island with a small log cabin.
