Caboose in Santa Fe Fast Fruit Express

@T4TT posted:

Can anyone identify the caboose in this set? Is that the tooling from the MTH ATSF woodsided caboose? I don't recall Lionel having a scale woodsided caboose.

I believe the MTH woodsided caboose was a pretty good representation of the real thing. I know there are others that are far more knowledgeable about ATSF cars than me.

These are former MTH CA-1 cabooses Lionel acquired. There are others in the catalog as well, including several UP versions. As far as I know, these are generic, with the same mold being used for all CA-1 cabooses regardless of road name. Nothing unique done for the ATSF version. At least the 4 MTH CA-1 cabooses I have are all the same.

Did the Santa Fe use the CA-1 caboose?

Thanks

@T4TT posted:

Did the Santa Fe use the CA-1 caboose?

Thanks

No.

There is an accurate Santa Fe plastic caboose in O scale. MTH's (I think Atlas bought the tooling) offset steel caboose is an accurate model of a Santa Fe prototype.

20-91689 | MTH ELECTRIC TRAINS (mthtrains.com)

Slide 1 (sfrhms.org)

I have an MTH 33-7804 AT&SF woodsided caboose and it is the same size and general appearance as my Lionel New York Central woodsided caboose, 6-17600, from 1987. But they are not from the same mold and the Lionel caboose has better detailing. It looks like Lionel used the same mold in 1988 in making my Southern caboose, 6-17601, but they used a different cupola so they look quite different. None of my cabooses looks like the Vision CA-1 cabooses in the new catalog, but there are several Lionel CA-1 cabooses on page 52 of the Lionel 2021 catalog volume II. Those cabooses look like they came out of the same mold, but oh my, look what happened after they came out of the mold. The "old" cabooses were priced close to $150 and the latest cabooses have many Vision features added, such as crew talk and electro couplers.