Historic Brownsville caboose has new home
Courtesy of the Monongahela River, Rail & Transportation Museum
A Monongahela Railroad caboose was relocated last week in Brownsville.
Ernie Bradmon, who worked on this caboose, talks Tuesday about its new home at a Brownsville museum.
Ed DeMuth is shown Tuesday with an old lantern in the Monongahela River, Rail and Transportation Museum in Brownsville.
BROWNSVILLE – A caboose that for decades has served as a landmark at the Route 40 entrance to Brownsville has been relocated to a local museum dedicated to railroad transportation.
The 70-year-old caboose was moved last week from Nemacolin Castle to the Monongahela River, Rail & Transportation Museum, where it will eventually be opened for tours.
“All of the bones are there,” said Ed DeMuth, a museum volunteer.
The 13-ton Monongahela Railroad caboose was moved using a crane and tractor-trailer under a $70,000 grant from Fayette County’s hotel tax account. The grant also will pay for new sidewalks and landscaping at the museum at 412 Church St., DeMuth said.
Ed Bradmon, another museum volunteer, worked in the caboose during his 35-year career on railroads.
“You had to survive the elements,” Bradmon said Tuesday.
During the summer, the air-conditioning was open windows on the 40-foot-long caboose. A coal-fired potbelly stove was the source of heat during the winter, he said.
This caboose is among a handful that survived the Monongahela Railroad, which was a short-line company that hauled coal. The railroad closed in 1993 under a merger with Consol.
Consol also donated Monongahela’s artifacts to the borough, which are now on display in the museum, items that include old photographs, tools and lanterns.
The caboose is unusual because it has a cupola where flagmen would keep watch on the rails, DeMuth said.
The museum is open by appointment and from 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesdays.