Friends of the Depot Museum Wants to Replace L&N Caboose

The Friends of the Cookeville Depot Museum and museum staff have asked City Council to mark the L&N caboose as surplus and sell it.

Friends of the Depot President George Holmes said having two cabooses is redundant, and that they hope they could replace it with something more relevant to Cookeville.

“We felt that instead of having two cabooses, perhaps if we sold the one that was not an original Tennessee Central caboose that money could be used later for other projects–possibly, for instance if we found an appropriate passenger car.”

Holmes also said that the L&N caboose is a newer model, and selling it would allow the museum to make a more historically cohesive display. Holmes said that because the L&N Caboose doesn’t fit in with the timeline of the museum’s display and because it wasn’t owned by the Tennessee Central Railway, they determined it would be best to sell it.

Leisure Services Director Rick Woods said in a meeting Monday night they would sell it on a government surplus auction website. Woods said that in addition to buying the caboose, the buyer would also be responsible for the cost of its removal and transport.

The L&N Caboose was donated to the city by Seaboard System Railroad in 1986. The caboose was the first one at the Depot, and Cookeville later acquired its Tennessee Central caboose and the steam engine.

Holmes said finding the kind of car they would want to replace the caboose can be difficult, so they want to sell the caboose now and have the funds readily available when a suitable replacement comes along.

“Doing something like selling a caboose so you can use the funds for something else is not something you can do in a couple of weeks,” Holmes said. “If we could get that done and have the money set aside and if the appropriate project or opportunity came along, we could move very quickly instead of having to wait an indeterminate amount of time by which the thing that we wanted might be gone.”