I purchased an HO gauge single sheathed Chicago & North Western (Roundhose Products) boxcar at a swap meet today. In an effort to find out if the lettering on the car was at least somewhat prototypical, I did a search on the internet. One thing I stumbled across was that such a car was still in existence at a place called the Neligh Mill State Historic Site in Nebraska (the car is CNW # 47688). The car is located on a track between an old brick flour mill and more "modern" grain elevators, apparently built in 1886 and 1899, with these two wood grain elevators currently clad in tin. Because of the location of the car, I couldn't quite see all of the lettering, so I did a further search, and soon came across a story that the "History Nebraska Board of Trustees" (current owner of the facility) plan to tear down the two grain elevators, but not the brick mill. I won't get into the reason for this decision, other than to say that it involves costly repairs to the two structures. It seems like this is a done deal (the article on the internet was from August of this year). What worries me in the pro and con discussions, is that nothing at all was said about the boxcar, which is in itself, an historic artifact. My guess is that the boxcar was spotted due to its involvement with the grain elevators, rather than with the brick flour mill. Thus, it would seem that the box car is also in jeopardy. Any museum out there that might be interested in saving this single sheathed C&NW wood bodied car? A museum with an emphasis on North Western equipment, would seem to be an organization that would have an interest and a phone call to the "History Nebraska" folks, might be in order.

Les

I was able to locate a couple of photos of the site, which includes the boxcar:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... idge_1.jpg

or possibly -

https://nebraskaarchitecture.org/img/ar ... iginal.jpg


Les

Not an expert but that looks like a USRA car. In my experience, most model manufacturers accuracy range seem to either fudge something or get it totally wrong. Rapido has a reputation of getting things pretty correct. A quick search shows that they make a C&NW USRA car in that paint and lettering scheme.

That said, it’s still a rare car that should be saved.