BELLE — Jimmy Zumwalt added a Rock Island caboose on Oct. 2 to his Rock Island trail assemblage at the coroner of Belle Avenue and Fourth Street.

“We’ve been looking at the deal for six months,” Zumwalt said. “I bought it from a friend of Hollis Sturdy’s. It was in front of their business and then they retired and sold their business.”

The previous owners used the caboose for records storage.

“When Hollis asked me one day if I wanted to buy a caboose, I said sure! I thought it would be neat. A lot of towns don’t have one. “We don’t have one.”

Zumwalt traveled into St. Louis on last Wednesday morning with a team ready to dismantle the caboose from its wheels and pull up the tracks it sat on. The process took about four hours before the crew began heading home. They made it back to Belle around 1:30 p.m. and prepared to set it all back up.

Cowboy Cranes set up along Fourth Street and began unloading pieces. The tracks went down first and piece by piece caboose took shape again. Zumwalt said he has plans to paint it soon.

“It is Rock Island blue and cream — the last Rock Island colors.” he said. “We’ve got to repaint it and everything. We are going to repaint it back to the old Rock Island colors which is red and yellow. The colors on the trail is all blue for the color of the Rock Island. It’s an ugly blue, too. Like, a slate blue.”

Zumwalt said his goal is to make the town better.

“With the trail coming through, it will be fun,” Zumwalt said. “I don’t know what we will do with it yet, but we will come up with something. We always do.”

Zumwalt’s caboose joins the former Belle MFA building that was moved in November 2021 and began restorations in the winter of 2022-23; and the world’s largest cowbell that was fabricated and installed earlier this year.