By STEVEN M. SWEENEY
MANTUA, Ohio -- Some people have gardens in their backyards, woodpiles or even accumulated unfinished projects.
Ken DeYoung has all of the above wrapped neatly in his own caboose.
It’s a genuine Erie Railroad caboose painted bright red and freshly trimmed with painted grab irons, surrounded by stone mile markers and ordained with Christmas lights.
“Those aren’t original,” DeYoung said of the holiday decoration.
Just about everything else is original.
For the record, DeYoung’s caboose is a 30-foot Magor-built wood-sided caboose made for the Erie Railroad in 1929.
Despite Christmas lights and a ceiling fan in the cupola -- another retrofit -- Erie caboose No. 04967 has its original wood siding, the internal steel “X” frame, windows, window and door latches, ladders, friction-bearing Bettendorf trucks and glass marker lamps.
He says it probably is the best example of its kind left anywhere.
“I’ve put a lot of work into it,” DeYoung said. “Probably 16 hours on a weekend three or four months during the winter. I’ve had it now about 10 years. That’s a lot, I guess.”
One Call Away
DeYoung, a life-long resident of Mantua, Ohio, has boyhood memories of Erie Railroad’s steam locomotives running through town on the Cleveland, Ohio, line between that city’s 55th Street yards and Youngstown, Ohio.
He grew up and joined a fully-dieselized Erie in 1953 and stayed with the company for 13 years. He left for what he said he thought was a better opportunity in a factory.
It wasn’t. He longed to return to the railroad, but never did.
“Once a railroad gets in your blood, it’s there; I don’t care what you do,” DeYoung said.
To satisfy his railroad appetite, DeYoung began collecting lanterns by the dozen, used railroad signs, a fully-operational Erie semaphore signal – even a pock-marked and barely identifiable cast-iron remnant of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, an Erie predecessor.
He would often tell his cousin, Larry DeYoung, a long-time Erie-Lackawanna historian, that something was missing from his collections.
“I said to him, ‘I need a wood-sided caboose because the one sitting in town ran the Cleveland line, but some guy from Soland bought it.’” DeYoung said.
Shortly after the death of his first wife around 1996, Ken DeYoung got the call from his cousin.
“He knows where there is one ‘if you want one.’” DeYoung said kicking a stone with his shoe and shyly looking on at his re-built masterpiece.
“Here it is.”
Restoring
Visitors to DeYoung’s wheeled museum trod on wood planks leading up to the caboose’s steps so they can keep their footing. DeYoung’s one 6-year-old grandson launches from steps to grass and avoids the steps altogether.
Inside, an almost correct version pot-bellied stove churns out charcoal heat for cold January days.
He points out where the toilet was – and will be again – the tool closet, the iron rod running the length of the car’s ceiling for a hand-hold and a clothes rack.
“And let’s see, from here back to that cupboard, it was missing. Then there’s another cupboard like this one,” he said cutting lengths of air with his arms.
The “missing” portion was about half the caboose’s interior. From old pictures Ken DeYoung keeps, it’s obvious the caboose was in bad shape and just steps away from scrap.
He turns to cloth-covered bench-bunks revealing more collections.
“This is where they put kerosene and that kind of stuff. The ice box goes in there,” he said, lifting the bunks.
He points to the red, green and grey interior trim – repainted identically to the way it was painted underneath a few top coats he stripped off.
Original doorknobs open the doors and original latches open the window. The trick is getting a hand around the steel bars.
“Those bars; they’re the original bars. They’re there so you don’t stick your head out the window and get your head knocked off,” he said.
According to a snapshot in Ken DeYoung’s notebook, No. 04967’s last railroad resting place was in the Erie’s old Meadville, Pa., yard in May 1974. He doesn’t know much more about it than that it had at least one other owner -- an older man who sold him the caboose in 1996.
Keeping Going
“Oh, it’s about 90 percent,” DeYoung said of his caboose. “I do as much as I can.”
That becomes a little less every year.
The 71-year-old has run into shoulder problems and other family issues. He also manages his collections, which now include a concrete railroad yard telephone booth, disassembled switches and a caboose-centered garden memorializing his late first wife and keeping up on chores ordered by his second wife, whom he married 10 years ago.
“Everybody wondered what I was doing, but the neighbors didn’t say anything. I was building a garden,” DeYoung said.
He says when he passes on, the caboose and everything else will all have to go too.
He’ll keep collecting in the meantime, however. But it’s a good thing he has the caboose for storage.
“My wife said I have too much stuff in the house,” he said.
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