The page is beginning to turn on a former staple in the village of Fredonia’s downtown business and entertainment district.

Crews relocated the caboose entrance of the old Caboose bar and lounge at 64 W. Main St. to the rear of the building on Tuesday. The building’s owner, Ryan Mourer, who is also the town of Dunkirk’s zoning/code enforcement officer, said the unique entrance’s removal from the building’s front is the first step in revitalizing and modernizing the once-popular hangout spot.

“We’re going to renovate the building into a future business,” he noted. “It’s a huge deal for some people for sure, and that’s my biggest thing is I want everybody to understand that my intentions are, if possible, to restore the caboose back to its glory days as everybody remembers it and to create a place to remember the Caboose family.

“At this point, I can’t disclose anything else (on what the new business may be), but more information can be provided in the coming weeks.”

Mourer added he plans to find a new use for the caboose on the property there, possibly putting it on display for all to see.

Fredonia Mayor Stephen Keefe said he has previously discussed the Caboose building with Mourer and added Mourer has talked about removing the caboose entrance for a while now in order to create a more manageable front to the building.

“He does a lot of stuff in the village here, a lot of renovations and a lot of fixing up,” Keefe added. “And that’s what he told me, he said that when he gets done with this building, it’s going to be the first thing you really notice when you come into the village from the west. He’s a big planner and he does follow through. Some of the things he’s put together are unbelievable.”

Samuel E. DelPopolo of Jamestown opened the bar in 1969. The late Thomas Pchelka of Fredonia took over operations at the Caboose in 1977 until his retirement in 2005.

DelPopolo recalled the “glory days” of his business, which included contests for the best bikini and the biggest pumpkin, Classic Movie Wednesdays and hundreds of bands, including the famous UFO group and Big Wheelie & The Hubcaps, for the huge crowds.

“That was the most successful cocktail lounge and restaurant in Chautauqua County,” he said, adding the drinking age was 18 back then. “It was packed all the time.”

The idea for using a real caboose as an entrance, DelPopolo said, came from his time at Cornell University, where he worked on building a restaurant and bar in some boxcars in Ithaca in the 1960s. The line of people for that, he said, was at one point a quarter of a mile long.

He was able to negotiate the price of an old caboose for sale in Newberry Junction, Pa., for a mere $500, with transportation to Fredonia at no cost. Once the caboose was put into place, DelPopolo himself worked on knocking out its inside wall to connect it with the building.

“The thing was so old, it was over 100 years old, the wood had become petrified,” he added. “I remember the first time I got a sledgehammer and tried to hit the inside wall, the sledgehammer bounced right off the wall. We had to end up sawing through the wood to make it weaken the side and it took us like a week to knock off the inside wall.”

A subsequent establishment after the Caboose, Rockin’ Rhi’s Crazy Train, saw the originally-red caboose entrance painted black, though Keefe pointed out that business did not last too long.

Mourer said he bought the building about three years ago.

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