Repurposing vintage cabooses for a one-of-a-kind comeback story

On a quiet stretch of the Virginia Creeper Trail, where cyclists ride between the towns of Abingdon and Damascus, a pair of bright cabooses sit on land once swallowed by floodwater.

Before Hurricane Helene, the property was home to a vacation rental built for families. Then, in September 2024, the storm moved through Southwest Virginia and reshaped the landscape in a matter of hours. Laurel Creek pushed over its banks, and when it finally receded, the house was gone.

Rebuilding the same structure never felt right. Then one night, the owner, Jennifer, was talking with her husband when he jokingly suggested, “What if we used trains?”

The idea stuck. It made sense: the trail follows the former route of the Virginia–Carolina Railroad, nicknamed the “Creeper” for the way its locomotives crawled up the mountain grades.

A pair of cabooses were sourced from across the country and hauled to the headquarters of J. Ross Painting, which took on the work of stripping away decades of rust and buildup.

The cleaning process started with a chemical treatment to break down corrosion, followed by pressure washing. Once dry, broad areas were handled with machine sanding, while the curved steel forced a mix of power tools and handwork around seams and edges.

There was also the matter of the graphics. Rail markings and codes had been stenciled onto the exterior, where they had long since deteriorated. The crew used heat guns and scrapers to lift the material carefully to avoid damaging the steel underneath.

The roof, undercarriage, wheels, and trim were coated in a gloss black industrial enamel alkyd selected for durability. These areas take the brunt of weather and use, so the coating needed to hold up under constant exposure.

Once painting was complete, each caboose was loaded onto a flatbed and transported back toward Damascus. As the trucks rolled into town, residents came out to watch. People lined the streets, waving as the cabooses passed by like a parade.

“Most residential painters would walk away from a project like this, but our workers embraced the technical difficulty,” owner Jeremy Yates said. “We knew that these cabooses would help bring tourists back to Damascus and support the local economy after the disaster.”