Northern Exposure

One of the Museum of Transportation’s benefits is allowing our area’s enthusiasts the opportunity to inspect trains from far away railroads. While most of the cabooses that we’ve seen thus far have been former L&N or IC rolling stock, this example was built by the Northern Pacific Railway, which operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Former President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in central Montana on Sept. 8, 1883 to open its main line, which ran from the Great Lakes to the Pacific. The company built this all-steel caboose as number 1082 in 1948. Our interior inspection found it offered oil heat and electric generated lights. When the NP later merged and became part of Burlington Northern, this car was renumbered 10435.