Unfortunately an outside braced wood boxcar caught fire at the Huntsville Depot Museum: https://www.facebook.com/61560951616248 ... 842939764/

Any idea as to the heritage of this single sheathed wood boxcar? Also, was it owned by the Huntsville Depot Museum or by the North Alabama Railroad Museum at nearby Chase, AL?

Les

It looks like a stock car, not a box car. Could be wrong though....

I looked through the NARM roster and I don't think so, they don't have any wood freight cars that I can see. https://narm.info/museum-equipment-roster-2/ On another note, I did discover that they have an original Lackawanna Alco S-2, which we can add to the roster of surviving Lackawanna engines.
Edit: is this it? It is captioned as "Unidentified U.S. Army Box Car sits on display at the Depot Museum." John Owens photo. https://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showP ... id=2165769

Every last detail matches, down to the bent step rail at bottom left. A loss, but rather low in the "pecking order" of things generally speaking........

The whole situation at Huntsville Depot sounds concerning since, in addition to the fire, the museum never reopened after Covid, and it sounds like squatters have been moving in..

https://www.waff.com/2025/04/29/family-concerned-historic-huntsville-train-museums-future/

Spontaneous combustion?

This is the phrasing commonly used when squatters build a fire to keep warm in a vacant house, and it gets out of control and ignites the structure (and in Baltimore, adjacent ones as well).......