...the "crew house..."
Here in the US-America's back in the steam era, the caboose was assigned to the conductor, being the boss of the train. Many roads had as many as five beds, an ice box, a cook stove, toilet room, closets, tool benches and at the crew change dropped the cab on the caboose track & spent the night in it.
The Clinchfield Railroad crews changed regular mine runs every month & kept their caboose with the conductor. One of their conductors even refused to allow his caboose to be turned unless the entire train was turned for the return trip.
Cabooses were considered "way-cars" & belonged to the railroad. As railroads merged towards the end of the caboose era, they were interchanged where needed to replace older worn-out cars on other parts of the same railroad.
Today, cabooses or "cabs" are used where a local might make a reverse movement through town or a across a highway. I saw one on a local man in Fostoria, OH recently, a plain red former N&W caboose on the Norfolk Southern.
You see all the handrails inside a caboose. Slack action in the train caused enough injuries that most roads forbid moving around inside the cab while the train was in motion.
Crew reductions from 5-man happened slowly, firemen were the first to go, then flagmen down to three man, now it's a conductor & locomotive engineer.
Some remote control setups are run with only a single operator, occasionally some roads only use a locomotive engineer on particular run-through movements...some remotes have a two-man crew & may in fact have a "shoving platform," a cab converted with no radio, seat or even windows.
But no, unless their was a formal agreement, like a waybill or some liability agreement, cabooses stayed pretty much on the same division or domicile location.
