The conductor and flagman aboard a Seaboard Air Line caboose work on their paperwork as their train rolls through the night sometime in the early 1950s. Classic Trains coll.
Seaboard caboose crew
By Mitch Horner | March 9, 2026
The conductor and flagman aboard a Seaboard Air Line caboose work on their paperwork as their train rolls through the night sometime in the early 1950s. Classic Trains coll.
I don’t recall that the flagman had any paperwork.
As one may recall, because freight train crews could not always be put in hotels, the versatile veteran caboose also served as a rolling hotel. It was equipped with tufted mattresses for sleeping, a coal or wood-burning stove for cooking meals, and basic wash facilities… SAL often assigned specific cabooses to individual conductors, who took great pride in maintaining them as their personal residences on the rails… The need for dedicated caboose crews declined in the late 1960s and 70s following the merger into SCL and the later adoption of EOT devices.
A real rolling office on rails.