Tilly's Caboose.

One of the cars located at the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry is caboose 1018, better known as Tilly's Caboose. 1018 is over 100 years old now having been built in 1917 for the ARR. I do believe the location is incorrect on where it was built. 1018 was one of four wooden cabooses built from the ground up in Anchorage, 1018, 1019, 1020 and 1021.

The ARR at that time had rotary snowplows and some of the second hand crumb boxes (crumb box is another railroad term for a caboose) that were being beat up bad during rotary service. 1018 was built with modern amenities such as a chamber pot, bunks to sleep six, and a sink with a water tank. The reasoning for this was because the snow fleet could be out clearing snow for days at a time.

When the Anchorage shops built them, legend has it that they used steel flat cars as bases and were slightly narrower than that of the older cars so they would not be smashed around by the deep walls of snow drifts and falling snow while blowing out the tracks. By the late 1940s I know a couple were rebuilt with side doors used from troop kitchen cars that were converted to box cars and were used on local trains.

Patterned after the older cabooses 1018 is the only surviving wooden box car from the beginnings of the ARR, and is the only surviving home built ARR caboose. Indeed Tilly's Caboose is a significant piece of ARR history. When 1018 was retired is a mystery as there isn't know info on that, but I'm sure it's out there. From what I've been told, Tilly Reeve somehow obtained the 1018 and donated the caboose that became Tilly's Caboose early in the museum's history.

These photos show what an old school, ARR caboose looked like 100 years ago, she needs some love, but is still with us. Just imagine being in Tilly's Caboose on the end of a coal train along the Matanuska River near King River, or going over Hurricane Gulch with three Panama Moguls and Rotary 2 heading to fight snow over Broad Pass. Mike Gerenday, 05/01/2021