The familiar caboose in front of Cellar Works Brewing is a historical treasure with a hardworking past.

The caboose was sold by the brewery to the Butler-Freeport Community Trail, which will move it to the Cabot Trailhead in the near future.

Tim Bauer, co-owner of Cellar Works Brewing, said 140 of the N-5G class cabooses were built by the Lehigh Valley Railroad in eight lots between 1939 and 1946.

An online railway history site, hebners.net, says the N-5G caboose was based on the classic “northeastern design” with distinctive rain channels added over the windows.

The cars were 34 feet long, 11½ feet high from rail head to roofline (excluding the cupola, which was about 2 feet, 6 inches high); and 6 feet, 6 3/8 inches wide.

The N-5G caboose weighed about 4,400 pounds.

Chris Ziegler, president of the Butler-Freeport Community Trail, said she was told the caboose was built in 1943 and served the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania since its construction.

Of the 140 built, only 67 are known to survive, Bauer said.

“This is one of them,” he said.

The caboose still contains the setup installed for the railway employee who called the caboose home as the train pulling it chugged around the Lehigh Valley.

The original bed, oil stove, table, benches, toilet and sink remain in the caboose.

Ziegler especially appreciates the cupola above the roof, which contains little seats on which the railroad employees apparently perched as they watched the train moving along the tracks.

Lora Cooper Rothen said her father, the late Saxonburg Mayor Reldon Cooper, brought the train in from out of state in 1994 when he built Cooper Station Restaurant.

The caboose was light blue and needed some tender loving care when it arrived, so her father painted it the same shade of redwood as the restaurant after fixing up some rusty spots.

The caboose came with the property when Cellar Works Brewing bought Cooper Station in 2015.