Caboose at Cooper Station Restaurant moving to Butler-Freeport Community Trail

The board of the Butler-Freeport Community Trail is buying the Cooper Station Restaurant’s distinctive old-style, red caboose along Route 356 in Winfield to relocate at a trailhead off Winfield Road in the township .

The purchase honors the history of the 21-mile trail, which was forged by the Western Pennsylvania Railroad in 1871 to connect Butler to Freeport. A railroad has not used the corridor for decades. The rails have been torn out and, like many across the state and nation, the right-of-way is now a hiking and biking trail.

“We’ve had our eyes on that caboose for years,” said Chris Ziegler, president of the board of the Butler-Freeport trail. Given the history of the railroad, Ziegler and the board have been looking for ways to pay homage to the trail’s past.

Just last fall, the board built a pavilion near the trailhead off Winfield Road with a roof based on that of the Butler Junction Train Station that once stood in Freeport, she said.

In fact, the caboose will be relocated near that pavilion on a one-acre parcel next to the trailhead near the intersection of Helmbold Road and Winfield Road.

When Ziegler heard that the new owners of Cooper Station, the independent brewery Cellar Works Brewing Co. in Buffalo Township, were retiring the restaurant’s railroad theme, Ziegler said she called the new owner and struck a deal.

Cellar Works Brewing Co. is an independent brewery that opened in 2017 at 110 S. Pike Road in Buffalo Township.

Calls to the company for comment Tuesday were not immediately returned.

“We are really excited to keep this historical community asset as a part of another community asset,” Ziegler said.

She declined to disclose the sale price but said the board is paying for it with proceeds from the trail’s half marathon and membership drive.

The daughter of the late Reldon Cooper, the former mayor of Saxonburg and former owner of the Cooper Station Restaurant, was happy to hear about the caboose’s fate. Her father had bought and refurbished it for his restaurant, which opened in 1994, said Lora Cooper Rothen, chief executive officer of Du-Co Ceramics Co. in Saxonburg.

“Over the years, Du-Co has contributed to the trail, and I think it’s a great place for it to end up,” she said.

The caboose will first be separated into two pieces. The wheel assembly will be detached from the caboose body then loaded onto a truck and hauled several miles to the trail, according to Al Roenigk, a trail board member and a longtime supervisor for Buffalo Township, which owns the trail.

He is working to help prepare the site and place the caboose.

Roenigk has wanted a caboose for a while for the trail knowing that engines are too large, and cabooses are distinctive, as compared to a regular box car.

“This is just some history to remind people it was a train rail,” he said.