Demonstrator Cabooses

No, they are all total fantasy.

It would have been money down the drain. Railroads assigned their own cabooses. Building / Modifying / Accommodating a unique caboose would have been more trouble than it was worth.

Why would they?  The Builders were selling locomotives, not cabooses.

Lionel and MTH do it for the people who think the caboose must always match the locomotive or because it's "cool."

Rusty

I like them, though.  I have two and think they are nice looking.  I know they are fantasy, but the lack of real world prototypes doesn't bother me.

I was at an open house in the EMD Lagrange, IL plant in the mid-80's. I recall that there was some kind of EMD lettered testing car that looked like a passenger car. I'm really not sure now if it was more for engineering folks and monitors and such for testing, or just a mobile sales car that sales staff would ride in. While not a caboose, did the other locomotive manufacturers have something like this too?

The follow-on to this is to wonder if any of the caboose-builders, possibly trying to win customers for new-fangled bay windows or wide-visions, had demonstrator cabooses, that never left their shop track...or...maybe did?

EMD had some dynamometer cars over the years, as well as a couple training cars early in the diesel age.  These were simply rolling classrooms, like some of the bigger railroads had (have?).  GE also had a few dynamo cars over the years.

No! The car/caboose manufactures didn't need any "demonstrators".

Plus, some of the railroads built their own cabooses in their own shops.

Rusty