Yesterday a group of intoxicated idiots smashed their car through the fenced enclosure and took out some of the roof supports sheltering the Merci train boxcar in Cheyenne, the boxcar buffer beam was damaged as well.
Lets hope the damage is all put to rights and those responsible are charged.

On another note does anyone know how old the actual boxcars are? I would guess by looking at them at around 1890-1900.
http://mercitrain.org/

Cheers
Mike Pannell
Car 57 Project

According to the mercitrain.org website, these "40&8" boxcars (so named because they could hold forty standing troops or eight horses) were built between 1872-1885. Boxcars of similar design were built up till World War I and all have had changes made to running gear and such over their service lives, so it's not easy to date these cars unless you're familiar with their history.

New Mexico's own Merci Boxcar is currently on display at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds (it's officially called the "New Mexico Expo", but none of us locals call it that, of course). It fell into disrepair like so many other of these cars, was eventually "rediscovered", and was restored by volunteers from one of the local model RR clubs back in the 1980s. Most of the metal fittings and running gear components had either disappeared or simply deteriorated beyond repair/reuse, so efforts were made to try and locate another boxcar in France that might have the required hardware, as some cars of this type (if not of the same class) were believed to still exist outside of museums. SNCF (the French national railroad) was able to locate an available 40&8 boxcar which had been used in MOW service and was in good shape, and money was raised to pay for having it shipped to the U.S. That same car now sits on display with the Merci Boxcar beneath a shelter consisting of a tent -like fabric roof supported by steel cables and very substantial steel posts (it'd take a lot more than a bunch of drunken idiots in a car to knock those down, although they would be more likely to hit the boxcars directly, plus they'd have to make it onto the fairgrounds in the first place, which isn't very likely given just how sloshed our DUI offenders usually are!); it's been well maintained and some of the gifts contained within the Merci car are also on display beside it.

Seems to me that the folks at American Legion Post #6 should've had some sort of barriers (such as the lengths of rail that were used, although concrete barriers might be better) on all four sides rather than just the side facing the parking lot, given the display's proximity to the street. Hopefully they'll put more barriers of some sort up once the repairs are finished; otherwise, this could easily happen again. (And no, I'm not criticizing, as that side street doesn't look like it'd have lots of drunken morons speeding down it, so no one would likely have been concerned about something like this happening when the shelter was built; it's not very far from Lincoln Way, though, and it sounds like the idiot driving must have tried to turn off of that street for some reason and hit the display. Being that close to a major street is a good reason to have more protection in place to prevent this sort of damage.)