This showed up on Facebook last night:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... e=1&ref=nf





Reported to be Mound Valley in extreme southeastern Kansas, between Independence, Kan. and Joplin, Mo., former junction between former Frisco and now-long-gone Katy. As can be plainly seen, no trucks. I have the impression the boxcar was only discovered partway through demolition, so this is not the stereotype "offering it for years with no takers."

Anyone in a position to hustle fast enough?

I love the supports! No doubt, she's a classic!

The railroad version of a "barn find". Very nice. Never thought I'd see paint that old again.

Someone needs to poke a camera under the edge and show the underframe, or lack thereof. I've seen enough boxcar sheds that have had all the heavy melt removed to not get too excited at the onset. I would expect to see the striker casting sticking out past the end; not seeing it raises a warning.

If the boxcar isn't worth saving, the siding with those markings would make a great display if they were cut out as a section, much like someone saving the skin sections with the insignia from a crashed or scrapped military airplane

In our neck of the woods, there is a non-operating museum called the Monon Connection Museum. A lot of interesting railroad items indoors but also some railroad artifacts outside. Two of these are wood bodied railroad cars that probably were farm sheds or something similar. I am sure that the underframe was missing on both. One of the cars is a Minneapolis & St. Louis single sheathed (outside braced) boxcar of the type that the "Louie" sold in quantity around the midwest. But the other is a wood ice-bunker refrigerator car that once was in service for Kingan & Company, a meat company located in Indianapolis, Indiana. This is probably the only existing railroad car carrying the Kingan name. The museum got around the fact that the cars had no underframes by mounting them on frames of other cars, perhaps old flat cars. The cars don't quite sit low enough, but overall, the impression is quite acceptable. MKT double sheathed yellow boxcar #75308 is probably the last one still in existance. Perhaps a restoration along the lines of what the Monon Connection museum has done, might save this old Katy car for posterity. Sure would be a worthwhile project.

Les

I have just received a report from the chap who originally posted the photo on Facebook:


"More than one"........... the mind boggles.

If it were me, I'd find out what day the property owner was going to bulldoze these and show up the day before that in a pickup truck with a good chainsaw or two, some crowbars and some claw hammers. And one person alone could cut out the sides and put them into a truck.
Better to save the markings and siding for a display along a wall of a museum than to see the whole thing turned into toothpicks while holding out to see if you can save the whole car...

What happened to this and the possible other box cars?