For the thirty years the trail of this relic of GBW's past went cold -- despite rumors that it still existed somewhere in the woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

More Caboose #605 Photos:
Eddie Gross photos, July 24, 2004

The Green Bay Route used a roster of wood bay window cabooses from the 1930s onward.  In the 1960s most of these cabooses were either scrapped and replaced with modern steel cabooses, or else heavily rebuilt as transfer cabooses.  Caboose #605 avoided the fate of its sisters, having been sold to the Copper Range Railroad about 1966.

The caboose remained in service on the COPR until the  end of operations in 1972, when it was sold to a Dr. Sabin of Marquette, Mich.  For the next thirty years, the trail of this relic of GBW's past went cold, but rumors persisted that it still existed, still intact, somewhere in the woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but evidence was lacking. In the summer of 2004 Eddie Gross of RailroadMichigan.com found the caboose in Big Bay, Mich., about thirty miles northwest of Marquette, Mich.

The exterior of the caboose is in relatively good shape considering that it has been over thirty years since it has seen any railroad service, and it still looks remarkably similar to how it looked during its previous thirty years on the GB&W.