More Caboose pictures

So this is how I spent most of last Saturday, prying up these floorboards (under supervision of course) We got about half up, then the subfloor has to come up. There is a work party every other Saturday. I got a break to take pictures of the arrival of the trucks, since I was the only one who had a camera. The regular camera guy was MIA. If you notice the flat prybar  in the third picture, this was before I broke it. The good news was that the boards were a full 1" thick. The bad news was, they were toe nailed with 2.5" nails.



There was some consideration given to running all this dust thru a gold pan.
In the last post I mentioned the story of the trucks. The caboose was sans trucks when it was rescued from it's previous life as an office addition at a used car lot in the south bay. Finding the proper trucks seemed like a tall order. They are primarily made of oak. A pair was located in a rail yard of the Mt Ranier Railway. They apparently had a similar caboose which was accidentally destroyed by a swinging boom of a crane. Fortunately they kept the trucks all these years. The wood was falling off them, but specifications were located and they were reconstructed. They were purchased for the  scrap value of the iron which was a heck of a deal. (However, they weigh about 3 tons apiece) The caboose still needs couplers. 

As much work as still needs to be done, other projects are already being eyed. A passenger car from the 1860's that ran on the NorthWestern Pacific (NWP) has been located, presently being used as a house, that has been donated. It uses similar (but bigger) trucks, and of course, does not have any. I think I've found a hobby.