McDonald’s caboose going down line

Would you care for a 30-ton caboose with that Big Mac?

The McDonald’s franchise in Spokane’s Hillyard neighborhood has added a new supersized item to its menu, at least for another day.

McChooChoo, the frontier-era caboose where a generation of Spokane-area youngsters celebrated birthdays before being closed down about four years ago, is on the eBay auction block. Bidding will close Saturday.

“It’s just been a landmark, an attraction with no practical use,” said Chris Weber, chief financial officer of Spokane Food Services, the franchisee that runs 24 McDonald’s restaurants in the area.

The cost and trouble of maintaining a 60,000-pound rail car, which hosted its first birthday party in 1978, has also become a burden.

The highest bidder will own this slice of Spokane history including the McDonald’s characters inside and out, the tables, chairs and benches and even the tracks that have held it in place since December 1977. The catch is that the buyer must arrange and pay for the shipping.

The company decided that eBay was right venue for selling, since one of its bookkeepers, Toni Weatherwax, had been selling items on the online auction site for almost five years. She is arranging the auction, already corresponding with several bidders.

One interested party was the McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino, Calif., the city that boasts the very first McDonald’s.

The museum did express concern over the cost to ship the caboose, so Weber hopes maybe a local person will buy it. “If you could put it up in the mountains and it could be a cabin, that would be really neat,” said Weber.

The caboose moved into the neighborhood after it was retired from Burlington Northern. It was meant to enhance the décor of the restaurant. The hamburger joint’s original theme was that of a train station, meant to reflect the industry upon which the Hillyard neighborhood grew, and the fact that the railroad runs through the restaurant’s backyard.

Birthday parties in McChooChoo included games, cake, ice cream and Happy Meals, plus bragging rights: A birthday in the caboose was cool. Even as adults, many from Spokane still fondly remember the parties they attended in the McChooChoo.

According to Weber, the owner of the franchise, Mark Ray, recalled when the train first pulled into its station. It traveled from Vancouver, Wash., by a train which stopped right behind the McDonald’s and was lifted into place.

The company that originally moved the car was Hite Crane and Rigging, which is still in business.

Bud Gill, vice president of Hite, said they have received numerous phone calls for estimates from all over the country. However, the cost of moving something that large and the logistics involved will be extensive.

“It isn’t going to be cheap, I can tell you that,” said Gill. “It’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood of six to seven thousand dollars.”

The caboose has been routed to power lines since it arrived, so power will need to be shut off temporarily, and the car will need to be jacked up and rolled out to where Hite can hook it up to a crane.

McDonald’s would like the McChooChoo to be gone by the end of August.