Back in the early days of railroading, before the advent of air brakes, a trains crew consisted of an engineer, fireman, conductor, head brakeman, rear brakeman, and several swing brakemen. The number of swing brakemen varied, with one man assigned for each 5 cars in the consist. The swing brakemen rode the rooftops at all times;freight train speeds averaged 10 mph back then. When the engineer wanted the brakes applied he blew a certain 'tune' on his whistle, and the brakemen, or 'shacks' ,ran from roof top to roof top applying the brakes. When the engineer whistled for 'off brakes ', the shacks went back and released them. The head and rear shacks also served as flagmen when the train stopped to switch towns, etc., with the conductor giving the orders and the other shacks throwing switches and uncoupling cars. The head brakeman rode the loco; the rear brakeman rode the caboose with the conductor. The conductor was the boss of the train; he sat at a desk doing paperwork while the brakeman sat in the cupola, observing the train. The caboose, back then, was assigned to a single conductor or crew. It was their office, lounge, kitchen and bunkroom. But cabooses were located at the end of increasingly long trains. There is play in the couplings...this is called 'slack'. On a long train, there can be as much as 6 or 8 feet of slack. This means, when starting a train, that a caboose can instantly jump 8 feet or more from a standstill when the slack runs out. If a crewman is not prepared, he can be violently thrown around, suffering severe injuries. Elimination of the caboose has eliminated those injuries. Since the invention of air brakes, the swing brakeman job has been eliminated; the use of diesels have done away with firemen; they dont need two brakemen to ride on the train doing nothing for hours; so today's train crew consists of a conductor and engineer. On certain jobs, brakemen are included if they are needed to switch along the way. There is plenty of room in the loco cab for the conductor , he no longer needs an office. A FRED is used on the rear car to monitor air brake pressure and transmit info to wayside recievers about the train's passing. There are regulations requiring a man to ride the first car of a train being pushed ahead of a loco, and a mile is considered the limit. It is unsafe for a man to ride a freight car more than a mile. In this case, cars that look like cabooses are still used as 'pushing platforms' to provide a safe place for the man to ride during long back up moves. Usually the doors are welded shut...one must ride on the end platform. This makes the car technically a rider car and not a caboose, so the interior does not have to be maintained (cleaning, servicing toilet, lights, etc). HTH Bill