Missouri Pacific Caboose 11351, displayed in the Railroad Workers Memorial, Cotter, Arkansas: Trout Capital USA

Missouri Pacific Caboose 11351

Cotter, Arkansas

This Standard Steel Welded caboose was built by Missouri Pacific at their Sedalia, Missouri, shops during 1948. It was rebuilt in 1967 and retired June of 1985. Its original number was 1067 but was changed to 13351, then 12351, and then to 11351.

Missouri Pacific donated number 11351 to the city of Cotter in 1986; it was originally located near Cotter's North Arkansas Youth Center. During 1989, vandals completely destroyed the interior and weakened its structure by fire; all windows and doors were then welded over. It was moved to this location during August of 2001 and was repainted during October of 2002.

The original car had four windows on the right side and three on the left side. Its present paint scheme, location/size of letters/numbers/heralds, white stripes, buzzsaw heralds and removal of roofwalk restores the caboose to Missouri Pacific's 1960s caboose rebuilding program era.

The year 1948 was the start of the Missouri Pacific steel caboose era. From 1948 to 1950, Missouri Pacific built 215 steel cabooses to replace the old wooden types; of these, 180 with steel welded sides were built at the Sedalia shops and 35 with steel riveted sides were built at the DeSoto, Missouri shops. The exterior paint scheme was a boxcar red with 24' diameter buzzsaw heralds on the sides directly under the cupola; the letters M. P. and car numbers were under the herald. Small numbers may have been place over the doors. These steel cabooses were big, roomy and had massive underframes that could take a lot of abuse; they were to be replaced by the 1971 steel extended vision types but many were still in service in the late 80s.

Most of Missouri Pacific's standard steel caboose were rebuilt in the 1960s at Sedalia. Some of the changes were: underframe modified, one bunk eliminated, wood paneling replaced with plywood, some had roofwalk and cupola handrails removed, some windows were blanked or welded shut, stoves changed from coal to kerosene and flush-type toilets; additions included radios, over head water tanks, aluminum window frames and electric marker lights. The exterior color scheme was to a vermilion paint (a few to an orange) with a 48" or 60" diameter buzzsaw herald on the sides with the underlying letters M. P. removed. Car numbers were added to the cupola ends; hand rails were painted white and a 3" tall white horizontal scotchlite stripe was placed across the lower side; a small buzzsaw herald may have been placed on the steel plate on the end platform. The screaming eagle MOPAC herald replaced the buzzsaw heralds on some steel cabooses during the 1980s.