Hello TETers. Here is a tail end post of a tail end for this Tail End Tuesday. I hope everyone is doing well on this Tuesday end of the day.
Here is my contribution. We all know the railroads did not really have a front end or rear end for their freight cars. They were rarely, if ever, turned. This goes for the caboose too. With few exceptions, they did not care which end the caboose was facing.
However, all cars have an "A" end and a "B" end. For freight cars, the "B" end was where the brake wheel was. A caboose had brake wheels on both ends, so which one was the "B" end (or for today the tail end)? This is the "B" end of this PRR N8 cabin.
How do I know this is the tail end? On freight cars the pointed end of the brake cylinder points to the 'B' end. To standardize terminology, for a caboose the pointed end will point to the 'B' end of the caboose. That makes the other end the 'A' end.
Now you know the answer to the question you never asked.
