Someone sent me a picture of a caboose with the heater or heater/stove putting smoke out of the chimney. My reply:
Really neat. That's the first I've seen with the stove/ heater going. I say stove / heater because it seems to me the heater might have had a cooking top, or I'm just reflecting on the old wood stoves. A friend had a wood stove at a camp out on the Henderson levee. Food cooked on it was better. Then the corps came along, raised the levees since their plan had caused the basin to silt up and all the old camps were torn down. Such a shame. They had been there a while and were a part of the fabric of the area.
His reply:
I'm with you on that. I'm reminded of the old pot belly stoves that were already on the way out as I was coming up, but occasionally I'd see one. When I did, it usually had a pot of coffee on top of it...
I can imagine the caboose stove having a pot of coffee on it too, for the engineer, fireman, brakeman & conductor...
So, us being on heaters, I pulled out my collection by the hardest. (I'm disorganized).
This one is at New Roads. Picture taken through
broken glass. Such a shame.
One of these is at St. Francisville and the other at Abbeville.
Similar but air intakes are different, if that other pipe is an
air intake. Obviously a heat exchanger set up. I'm sure the guard
rail came in handy.
v
But, I knew I had one more reference where I might
find an old timey potbelly stove in a caboose, "Switch Back".
Switch Back was a great movie if you like action and adventure
and serial killer movies. Danny Glover was great, a role which
no doubt was easy for him to play. Rent it.
I then went about scouring the movie for heater pictures.
Here's Dennis Quaid asking about this heater.
This is the route the train is going to take. I know where Trinidad
is. It is one of the first towns you come to going north out of
New Mexico on I-25. If you've been to Colorado and had come from
the southeast, you know where Trinidad is, also. I stayed there
one night in an awful motel. I slept on top of the sheets. The roaches
did, also. Since, I've never been back to a motel.
Here's "the train" or "a train". It may not be the main train, but if it
is the cabooses are switched later on. Notice, this is a normal
caboose.
It is red.
Next we see the train climbing up the valley. Valleys are the
way trains get over mountains when possible. They follow
the rivers that made the valleys. Geology, you just can't do w/o it.
Oops, different caboose. Told you.
One of the young stars is thinking about turning that valve.
He gets reprimanded later in the show.
These are things.
Remember "Believe" on the map?
Have you started cooling off any yet?
Now?
I'm thinking these were models.
See the 3rd track?
Dennis is now going to jump on the train. Maybe that town name
was a subliminal message to accept that he's going to make it
without killing himself. Please, don't try this.
2010, wow. Dude, is that strange?
OK, this caboose has a potbelly stove with what looks like a coffee
pot sitting on it. Let's see if we see that shovel again?
Models, I'm telling ya.
Cool, Southern Pacific. See Dennis on the tank car?
Teeny models. Size .oooooo6.
"Rio Grande" is written on those engines. I wonder if they
really mean Denver and Rio Grande? I think they bought the SP
with the money they earned at Durango with the Silverton
excursion train. If you've been, you know what I'm talking about.
Too much. It don't look real. That's in Hollywood.
Ok, this is another back door shot, where's the shovel and that ain't
the last potbelly. But look to the left. There are those things.
Is that up hill or down hill?
Uh oh, the bad guy has hit the wing switch.
He and Dennis are going to take a ride on the snow drift busting
"wings".
That sho ain't our red cabose.
Hope that outhouse is empty.
And, the train moves on.
Uh,oh. Bettr get that wing in.
All this time the engineer has no idea what is going on.
Sparks. Yea, right.
Down, out of the mountains.
The next few pictures are for mulling. Mull on.
See, Cotton Belt. I told you.
Now we are up in the lead engine.
That's his WTH look.
The two sheriffs are checking out the train and noticing that
there was no piggy back carrier on the original train, at least not by the
engines.
The story closes with these pictures of more model trains.
Just kidding. I think that's the San Francisco yard if I remember
correctly. More later.
