File:I-5D caboose C2124 of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad - February 2018.jpg

English: Caboose C2124, built and formerly owned by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, on display at the Painesville Railroad Museum in Painesville, Ohio, in the United States.

This is a center cupola caboose. The American Association of Railroads (AAR) type is M930, and the AAR class is NE (caboose mounted on eight wheels and longer than four-wheel caboose, but of the same general design).

The caboose is about 33 feet, 10 inches long and about 14 feet high. The body weighs about 36,500 pounds, and each wheel base (or "truck") weighs 5,000 pounds.

This caboose was built by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in April 1927 at its shops at Washington, Indiana.

The B&O conceived of an upgraded type of caboose, the I-5, in 1924. The superstructure of previous cabooses were made of wood, but the I-5s would have a steel frame and steel ends. The prototype was numbered C-1900. A total of 401 cabooses were produced between 1924 and 1929. (The extra one was a wreck replacement.) Early I-5s had four-pane side windows, while later production models had a single pane. The I-5s were painted Freight Car Brown with black railings, white grab irons, and white lettering. During and just after World War II, the cars were repainted Devil's Red.

The I-5C was the improved I-5. It had an elongated wheel base and a concrete slab beneath the floor boards. It's not clear when production began, how many were made, or where they were built.

The I-5Ds were upgraded I-5Cs. Their tool boxes were removed, the arch bar trucks replaced, and they had AB brakes. Some later production model I-5Ds had toilets and oil stoves. Because the toilets blocked a window, I-5Ds usually (but not always) had one window removed and replaced with wood siding. It's not clear when production began, how many were made, or where they were built.

This caboos was converted from an I-5 to an I-5D at the Gassaway, West Virginia, shops in April 1953. Its original "K" brakes were replaced with "AB" brakes in July 1953. About 1963, one of the side windows was blocked off. This is because the stove inside the caboose blocked this window. About this time, the car was painted yellow in accordance with the Chessie System paint scheme. (The B&O merged with the Chespeake & Ohio Railroad in 1963.)

The caboose received an Automatic Car Identification (ACI) plate and a new coat of paint in December 1970 at the railroad's shops in Chillicothe, Ohio.

The C2124 caboose was retired by the road in December 1975 and acquired by the Lubrizol corporation for $1,000 the same month. Lubrizol invested about $6,750 in gutting the caboose, replacing the windows, and upgrading the interior. The company used it as a break area, meeting space, storage space, and for other purposes.

Lubrizol stopped using the caboose in 1992. The firm donated the caboos to the Painesville Railroad Museum in 2000. The caboose was destroyed by arson on March 22, 2006. The museum began a rebuild in 2011, which was completed in the summer of 2015. The rebuild appears to have restored it to a pre-1963 condition.

Although a wonderful rebuild, the caboose is missing its smokestack. There are no awnings over the windows, and the cupola window is a single window rather than a side-by-side double-window. It's not clear why the end-facing windows of the cupola are closed off.