GREENFIELD — When there was talk last year about removing a damaged, aging railroad caboose the town owns from the corner of Route 9N and the Porter Corners Road, a group of town residents said, “please don’t.”

“That’s our caboose. You are not taking our caboose,” said town resident Stan Weeks, joking about the Town Board meeting in early 2007.

Town officials said if those concerned residents wanted to repair the old D&H Railway caboose, they were welcome to do it.

A dozen residents organized into the Greenfield Caboose Committee and over the past 10 months have renovated the caboose, which sits near the historic Kings Railroad Station.

The Kings Station was a regular stop when trains went from Saratoga Springs to Corinth and the former International Paper Co. mill there.

The caboose was damaged and partially burned when a vehicle went out of control and hit it on Dec. 17, 2006. The accident claimed the life of a 22-year-old Cohoes man.

At that time town officials were discussing allowing the old caboose, which the town bought nearly 20 years ago for $1, to be taken away to the county fairgrounds or other locations.

The residents protested. “It kind of got a life of its own,” Weeks said on Thursday.

The town received an $8,800 insurance settlement after the accident and the $6,000 toward repairs to the caboose have come out of this money.

Tony Bucca, a town resident and railroad buff, said at a recent Town Board meeting that the early, professional estimates to renovate the old caboose were in the $30,000 to $40,000 range.

The volunteers have donated all their labor to the project and spent the $6,000 on supplies like a new roof, new wooden siding and other building materials.

“We completely rebuilt the caboose at no cost to the town,” Bucca told the board.

“We stripped the caboose to the framework,” Bucca said.

Ed Woodard, who like Bucca and Weeks is one of the active volunteers, said the caboose was covered with two sheets of plywood. He said the outer sheet of plywood wasn’t too deteriorated but the inside sheet of wood was rotted and infested with insects.

Woodard said he had the new siding material in his garage this past winter and was able to paint it railroad red during the late winter months.

“It was deteriorated, depressing to look at,” Woodard said about what the caboose looked like before all the work was done.

The committee isn’t finished. Bucca asked the Town Board for another $2,000 for paint and other supplies so that the King’s Station can be repainted and repaired.

The board quickly passed a resolution to give the committee the remaining $2,000 from the insurance settlement.

“You did an excellent job,” Supervisor Dick Rowland said to the committee members at the meeting.

Weeks said the committee and members of the Greenfield Historical Society have been discussing ways to show off the caboose and the old railroad station to the public.

These proposals include having town history days in the spring and fall and opening the caboose and station at those times, Weeks said.