NORGE — About 70 years ago, children and adults often eagerly awaited the red caboose at the end of a freight train pulled by its smoke-belching steam engine.

By the 1980s, electrified engines meant that a caboose and crew were no longer needed, and the red caboose soon became part of America’s nostalgia.

Today, it’s hard to find a caboose anywhere. Some small line railroads — perhaps only several dozen or so — across the country still have cabooses on the tracks, but mostly they are gone or standing silently in fields, rusting and falling into disrepair.

In Norge, however, a little red caboose, now 100 years old, has been saved and is open to the public while in the final stages of restoration by the Norge Depot Association, said Chris Hamilton, a member of the association.

Hamilton’s

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