I rode my bike out to Desert Center a couple of weeks ago (only 106 in Desert Center that day!) in order to climb all over and measure one of the two Kaiser Steel cabooses (the original #1905) for a scratch- building project.
I say "spangs" because there are few actual bullet holes in the thing. Kaiser scratch-built the two cabooses at the Kaiser Steel plant at Fontana, using their own steel straight out of the rolling mill, and they didn't fool around any as the steel sides are so thick that they stopped nearly all of the large-caliber bullets; sustaining only paint damage and dents for the most part.
I've also got complete dimensional data for #1905 in case anyone out there would like to build one. As you can see from the photos, it
*looks* home-built, and except for width it doesn't seem to share many dimensions with the S.P bay-window cabooses it was supposedly patterned after.Lastly, can anyone I.D. those trucks? I'm not sure that I've ever seen anything quite like them.
Thanx,
~Pete