Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Clerk Melissa DiMattio peers out the window of a unit at the Caboose Motel in Titusville. Each of the motel's 21 caboose cars is a complete motel room.

By Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

TITUSVILLE -- As we wound up our after-dinner stroll and stroller walk in the business district of this Crawford County town, my friend pointed ahead and said to his almost-4-year-old daughter, "I see cabooses!"

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette The interior of a unit at the Caboose Motel in Titusville. Click photo for larger image. Each week we map out a road trip in the region. If you have a suggestion for a great one, e-mail roadtrip@post-gazette.com or write: RoadTrip The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 34 Blvd. of the Allies Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Indeed, down there by the railroad tracks, we saw several, and then more and more of them, the closer we got.

There are 21 in all, two side-by-side strings of coupled cabooses painted in crayon-bright shades of red and blue and turquoise.

A sign welcomed us to the Caboose Motel.

Each caboose is a separate motel "room," or actually, two rooms, as every one has been remodeled with a full bath that's much nicer than the primitive toilets and dry sinks when these were train crew quarters/conductor offices.

The unusual lodging operated nearby from 1996 to 2002 as Casey's Caboose Stop. In 2004 it was acquired by the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad, which moved it beside its Perry Street train station.

This spring, the excursion railroad spruced up the cabooses, painting them all with the colors and logos of various railroads and adding a little landscaping -- using railroad ties, of course.

They're still an island in an expanse of industrial gravel in the shadow of a looming blue plastics factory -- a fact that contributed to my friend's wife opting to stay in the nearby Comfort Inn (that also has a pool and complimentary breakfast).

But what one-time rail buff (like me) or kid could resist snoozing in a caboose?

So on this recent Saturday evening, my wife and I checked in at the little office the OC&T built at one end. The clerk gave us the key to one of the Pennsylvania Railroad cabooses, ol' No. 1003, and told us the place was completely full.

We'd reserved one with a cupola, the type with a king bed. Lodgers also can choose one of the bay-windowed cabooses, which have double beds.

We and our friends stepped onto the wood deck that connects the cars and unlocked the heavy metal door only to be hit by a blast of heat. But it didn't take long to cool down once we turned on the air conditioner.

Our caboose also had a phone, a desk (with coffee maker), and a TV mounted on one of the walls, which were finished just like a regular motel, right down to the wall paper. But for the cupola skylights and the choo-choo-themed art, you might not know you were in a caboose, unfortunately.

Our friend's little girl still thought it was quite cool. But that made me muse about how, besides children's books, today's kids have no reason to even know what a caboose is because their ending of freight trains pretty much ended two decades ago.

"It's a real novelty," says Eric Rapp, assistant office manager for the nonprofit railroad, which leaves the management of the motel to a for-profit subsidiary.

The railroad itself, which runs the 27-mile round-trip from Titusville into Oil Creek State Park and back, is this weekend celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Our group didn't take the trip in 1930s passenger cars behind a 1940s diesel engine, which includes the country's only working postal car (it cancels stamps on mail). We were riding bikes on the 10-mile paved trail that also follows Oil Creek, but our friends have ridden the train before and much enjoyed it, especially because they pedaled one way and rode back in an open gondola car.

Chances are, that day's train carried plenty of other people -- mostly families -- staying in the cabooses.

Or "cabeese," as OC&T secretary (and postmaster) Lou Adelson likes to call them for fun. He says the actual word "caboose" evolved from the Dutch kabuis, for the kitchen on early ships. They traditionally were red for visibility. Railroad crews shrunk as engines and freight trains got huge and high-tech. By the 1980s, cabeese were replaced by remote radio "End of Train" devices (EOTs), or as railroaders call them, FREDs, for Flashing Rear End Devices.

Mr. Adelson says generations after his tend to think of cabooses as just cute. "They tend to be a piece of nostalgia that most of us wish hadn't gone away."

There are other places you can sleep in a stationary caboose or two, but it's rare to have a choice of so many. (Strasburg, Lancaster County, home to the steam Strasburg Rail Road, also has the Red Caboose Motel and Restaurant that offers 44 rooms in 38 cabooses plus other rail cars.)

We discovered that our king bed was actually two beds pushed together, and we were awakened quite early from the light pouring in through the cupola windows. But all in all, our night's journey in the caboose was quiet and comfy.

As we'd settled in, a big group of about 14 people were sitting around a bonfire they'd lit in a raised fire ring on the gravel beside the occasionally clanking factory.

When it was dark enough that you couldn't make out their assortment of folding chairs, you could imagine them as a group of happy hoboes, resting awhile before the morning and moving on.

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If You Go: Titusville

Titusville, on state Route 8, is about a 2 1/2-hour drive north of Pittsburgh. The Caboose Motel, at 405 S. Perry St. (Truck Route 8), is open May through Oct. 29 and rents cabooses for $79.95 per night plus tax. Three have wheelchair ramps. Reservations can be made at 1-800-827-0690.

The adjacent Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad runs at least once a month, every weekend June through October, plus some weekdays in July, August and October. Tickets are $12, $11 for seniors age 60-plus and $8 for children 3 to 12 (motel guests get the group-rate dollar discount). For details: www.octrr.org or 1-814-676-1733.

Titusville borders neighboring Venango County. The "Oil Heritage Region" has several other attractions, including Oil Creek State Park and its rail trail. The park office at Petroleum Centre rents bikes (www.dcnr.state.pa.us).

Just weeks ago the park received funding to begin extending the trail southward and eventually it could be part of a Pittsburgh-to-Erie route. For now, the trail leads north to the Drake Well Museum, a lovely park that is the site of the world's first commercial oil well in 1859, making it the "birthplace of the oil industry" (www.drakewell.org or 1-814-827-2797).

A short spur leads on to Titusville, which has several restaurants and bars. Just across from the Caboose Motel is the fun Mill Restaurant (www.the-mill-restaurant.com or 1-814-827-9930). In nearby downtown Titusville is Four Sons Brewery Restaurant (www.foursonsbrewery.net and 1-814-827-1141), which serves lunch and dinner and its own tasty beers, and the cute, Coca-Cola-themed Missy's Arcade Restaurant, which serves great breakfasts and lunches and dinners on Fridays (1-814-827-8110). Don't forget, as the in-caboose directory advises, to "Take a drink of Titusville's Award Winning Tap Water."

The city has summer concerts Mondays in Scheide Park, where there's an Oil Festival on Aug. 12. Nearby Oil City will celebrate its Oil Heritage Festival from Thursday through next Sunday (www.venangochamber.org).

For more on the area, visit www.titusvillechamber.com and www.oilregion.org.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Each of the 21 units at the Caboose Motel in Titusville is a complete motel room.