Cabeese were abolished in the 1980s by FRED, or Flashing Rear End Device, a device that records various data about the train. It also has a little flashing light of course. I feel like this is adequate if you have like 30 car trains but with the multi-mile long trains today I do think there should be a caboose requirement for trains over a certain length. I wonder if the East Palestine derailment might have been prevented if there was a caboose on the train to watch for smoky axles. Plus, two more people in an emergency.

Now that I think about it, a caboose probably wouldn't have been enough to stop the derailment because the train was so long, but it might have helped a little.