By Tim Nicklas
Director, Grand Encampment Museum
Following eight years of restoration work, the Grand Encampment Museum will be celebrating the dedication of the Saratoga & Encampment Railway caboose on Wednesday, August 16 at 10 a.m. To mark the dedication, a short talk, and the handing out of a commemorative pamphlet designed by Dick Perue. Tours of the newly restored railcar will be followed by a serving of homemade ice cream.
The wooden caboose was originally constructed in the 1890s by the Standard Car Company. Probably around 1906-07, the Saratoga & Encampment Railway (S&E RY) purchased the caboose along with other rolling stock as the iron road was being laid from Wolcott to Encampment. The purchase was a secondhand one from a Chicago firm. After two-plus years of construction, the S&E Ry (or the Slow and Easy) arrived in Encampment with great excitement in the summer of 1908. Nonetheless, the railroad arrived just in time to witness the bust of what had been a ten-year mining boom. The Ferris-Haggarty Mine had abruptly shut down, depriving the newly christened railroad of its copper ore to haul.
Despite the copper bust, the railroad continued to serve Encampment until the 1970s. Sometime before 1939, the old S&E caboose, along with a snowplow was abandoned on the tracks in the Encampment yard. Eventually, the old rail car would end up on the property of Gene Bashore in Riverside. It was through the generosity of Bashore that the caboose would end up at the Grand Encampment Museum.
When the caboose was first brought to the museum grounds in 2014 it was in pretty rough shape. Within a couple of years, boards had been replaced and fresh paint applied to the exterior of the car and a deck was built. Next, paint was scraped in the interior and a new floor was lain. It is truly amazing when looking back what an incredible restoration has transformed the old caboose.
