Why no more cabooses?

Did anybody mention how dangerous riding at the end of the train was? If the engineer wasn't careful in his braking he could easily kill or injure the rear end crew via violent slack action. Like non-automatic car coupling, or manual braking, riding at the rear of a long freight train is a job that society can do without and its a good thing that technology was developed to eliminate it.

Jersey_Mike wrote:Did anybody mention how dangerous riding at the end of the train was? If the engineer wasn't careful in his braking he could easily kill or injure the rear end crew via violent slack action. Like non-automatic car coupling, or manual braking, riding at the rear of a long freight train is a job that society can do without and its a good thing that technology was developed to eliminate it.

Well, yeah, I did, back on the second page

And decreased injuries arising from 'slack-action':
"...crews would be first to admit that slack action was still a major concern in safe caboose operation...studies and reports also indicated significantly fewer job-related accidents on caboose-less trains"

Well, OK, the caboose book I was quoting from mentioned it, but still