For the past year when we go to Costco in Prescott, as there is none in Kingman, there is a Caboose right off I-40 near Ashfork that my wife points out every time we pass it. This last trip she said that she has always wanted a Caboose and wanted to know if we could find one. When we checked into it they are very expensive and the cost to bring one to our property made it too costly for us to afford. During the search online we found a person in southern California (Dogpatch and Western Railroad) that offers a kit with plans to build you own replica Caboose, so we sent for the plans and decided to build a Caboose.
First thing to do is pick and clear a location and we decided to put it on the north side of the house behind the RV shelter.
The chain link fence was taken down and there was a lot of stored material that must be moved. The RV shelter is behind the tree.
These are looking from the RV shelter up towards the house showing what had to be moved and the trees that must be taken out.
Below is the view the Caboose will have looking North that will have a cupola, that is the look out structure on the roof.
These two pictures are after everything is moved, the trees taken out and several days on the tractor moving dirt and leveling.
The three pictures below is the form work with re-bar for the foundation of the rock retaining wall that will be in front and parallel with the 36 ft. long Caboose.
Every 30 days all the cars get started and moved, during the last starting of the Kaiser a weird mechanical noise came from the engine and Karen was able to pin point it in the front part of the valve cover on the drivers side. In order to remove the valve cover the intake manifold had to removed. When I got the valve cover off the #5 intake rocker push rod had popped out and was hitting the valve cover and was bent. I did a compression check to make sure the piston and valve were OK, straightened the push rod and put it back in to check rocker and valve operation that looks good. I could find nothing else wrong so a new push rod has been ordered and I will put it back together.
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