Recently our club, Mid-South Live Steamer's, purchased a used L&N steel caboose to use as office at the meets and it was noticed that several of the windows had been welded over with 1/4" thick steel plates. I found out that this was because of a 1980s mandate by our benevolent government that cabeese be fitted with shatterproof glass in all windows as protection against thrown bricks when passing through ghettos . It was deemed cheaper to armor plate the windows with steel rather than shatterproof glass, but a few windows were not covered over. Some railroads opted to cover over all of the side windows, but our caboose has two glass windows to each side. Also, the cupola windows were not covered over as one really does need to keep an eye out for hot boxes etc. Of course, hotboxes are pretty much a thing of the past these days of roller bearings so the cabeese have gone the way of steam locomotives. This has made it really hard on hoboes as they depended on the oil soaked string packing in the boxes as fire starters for their camp fires. Maybe the hoboes are gone as well? Jesse in Troy, TN where it has warmed up into the 70s today. MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email to, modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.