Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- Susan and Hal Osborne dreamed for years of owning a coffee shop outside the city, in Ester, and they wanted it to fit in with the neighborhood around their business, Gold Hill Imported Beer and Fine Wines.

Susan Osborne settled on a train theme and had a 45,800-pound retired Alaska Railroad caboose hauled north from Anchorage. Her husband's response: Why not?

"We always say I'm the gas, he's the brakes," Susan Osborne said with a laugh. "The whole time he's been full-throttle right beside me on this."

The railroad put four cabooses up for auction in July. Osborne flew to Anchorage and picked one she liked. The railroad required a base bid of $8,000 and she bid $13,000. She heard she won last month.

The Osbornes' 37-by-8-foot train car is covered by grimy splotches. It has exposed screws and the faint odor of diesel fuel. They have no idea if the plumbing, generator or electrical wiring work. But it has an undeniable quality, Susan Osborne said, that makes up for all of that.

"I think it's got appeal -- it's got character built in," she said.

Cabooses were once crucial for the railroad. Workers rode there and threw switches on the track or used them as a bunkhouse on long trips.

But cabooses began to vanish in the 1980s, when track-switching became automated.

"This is its last voyage," Osborne said of her caboose.

Railroad spokesman Tim Thompson said private buyers bought two of the four cabooses. The railroad didn't receive the minimum required bid on the other two.

The Alaska Railroad acquired the Osbornes' caboose in 1971 from a railroad in Canada. It was retired in 1991 and it has been in the Anchorage rail yard ever since.

The Osbornes have to figure out how to get their new purchase to Ester.

The railroad agreed to move it to Fairbanks. The next step will require a crane, a flatbed truck and a new foundation.

The 3,000-pound knuckle couplers on each end of the caboose will be removed, as will the heavy iron wheels. Special bars will reinforce the caboose so it won't collapse when it's lifted.

The Osbornes hope to have the caboose cleaned up and ready for business by spring. Another railcar could eventually follow.

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