A Great Northern Railway caboose from the 1920's is seen on display Monday afternoon in Tenino.
Tenino Mayor Wayne Fournier opens the door to a Great Northern Railway caboose from the 1920s Monday afternoon in Tenino.
The inside of a Great Northern Railway caboose from the 1920s is seen full of wood debris after the cupula was removed for transportation Monday afternoon in Tenino.
A Great Northern Railway caboose from the 1920s is seen on display Monday afternoon in Tenino.
A Great Northern Railway safety sign is seen on display on a caboose from the 1920's Monday afternoon in Tenino.
Wear and tear over decades is seen on a Great Northern Railway caboose from the 1920s on display Monday afternoon in Tenino.
Tenino Mayor Wayne Fournier points to the area a cupola once was on a Great Northern Railway caboose from the 1920s Monday afternoon in Tenino.
When the City of Tenino turned its train depot into what is now the Tenino Depot Museum, it reconstructed some old train tracks in front of the building, hoping to someday display a railcar of some sort.
That day will come as soon as next year, now that the city is the proud owner of a 1923 X549 Great Northern Railway wooden caboose. Tenino purchased the bright red railcar for $6,200 at a recent auction. It most recently sat within the Country Village Shopping Center in Bothell, which closed earlier this year to make room for multi-family housing.
“Bidding was pretty fierce,” Tenino Mayor Wayne Fournier said. “There were about 15 people bidding on it and we wound up paying about as high as we were willing to go. It’s something that’s been talked about for a long time. We had always been on the lookout for something to put on those tracks and now we’ll hopefully have something out there by next summer.
The caboose is already awaiting restoration inside a warehouse in Tenino. It has the seal of the Great Northern Railway — which ran from Minneapolis to Seattle from 1889 to 1970 — on one side with the words “Be Wise, Beware, Be Safe” painted nearby.
Fournier said the city is not going to rush the restoration process in order to present the caboose to the public on an accelerated timetable. Members of the Tenino Lions Club and some local train aficionados have stepped forward to help out the city public works staff. The city also plans to pursue grant funding over the next year to help pay for some of the restoration work as well as ongoing maintenance and upkeep needs.
“It’s got to be a place where, if people are attracted to it and go up to it, it’s not going to get beaten up and fall apart,” Fournier said. “The doors and windows have to be secured, too. We don’t want it to become a nuisance instead of a display piece.”
What else the city plans to do with the X549 caboose besides display it at the Depot Museum remains to be seen. Some options that have been discussed included renovating the inside, which is currently set up as office space, as a room to hold small gatherings or birthday parties, or as a location for tourists to rent for a unique overnight stay.
The Depot Museum may also be able to make use of the interior for a rotating exhibit of train equipment and memorabilia unique to Tenino. Those decisions will be made as the restoration work continues, Fournier said, because he doesn’t expect the caboose to be ready for use until next summer.
“You go through a lot of these towns in Lewis County and you’ll see like a train engine in the park,” Fournier said. “An old steam engine is extremely hard now to come by. We want it to be something that families at the museum can experience and make it more obvious that it used to be a train depot. We don’t know what it’ll become beyond a show piece, but I think we’d be pretty happy with that alone.”
