Photographs courtesy of Mike Gerenday

The Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry has many modes of transportation from all over Alaska that spans over 100 years now. From rail to road there seems to be a little of everything there for all to enjoy. The railroad equipment there spans from the Alaska Railroad’s early days to the 1980s with the last F7A being retired in 1986 as part of the displays, but there are two cars there that stick out to my a little more than the other cars on site, for there are two old box cars that ran the rails that will never see the steel wheel again…

The Copper River and North Western Railway was 196 miles long that ran from Cordova to the Kennecott mines and was constructed between 1909 and 1911 having been completed in March of that year. From 1911 to it’s closing in 1938, the Copper River and North Western hauled many hundreds of thousands of tons of copper ore in sacks from Kennecott to Cordova where they were loaded onto ships flagged under Alaska Steamship Company destined to Tacoma Washington where a smelter awaited the Alaskan copper.

In November of 1938 the last train of the Copper River and North Western ran from the mines to Cordova picking up cars and people ending an important chapter in Alaska’s history. The railroad was officially abandoned in 1939 and in 1940 there were 30 pieces of rolling stock that was purchased by the Alaska Railroad. Sometime between 1939 and the outbreak of WWII some locomotives and rolling stock that did not come to the Alaska Railroad were sold off, and during WWII the U.S. Army operated a portion of the old railroad from Cordova to an airstrip roughly 13 miles north of town using equipment left in Cordova. After the war, in 1946 the Army started to dismantle the railroad and transferred three locomotives and a few pieces of rolling stock to the Alaska Railroad. There were a couple of passenger cars include in the lot, and only one locomotive was known to have made it to the Alaska Railroad only to be scrapped in 1947 alongside the last of the original Alaska Railroad steam locomotives. Information on what coaches and how many that came to the Alaska Railroad is nearly impossible to find at the time of this writing.
On the grounds of the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry, two wooden box cars sit along retired Alaska Railroad cars that were used on the Copper River and North Western Railway, one hauled perishables and the other most likely hauled sacks of rich copper ore. The cars are intact, though they could use a dose of love as their skin is tattered and worn as with most of the cars on site. The Cars are 40 feet in length and were built in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. The cars had a little door on the ends for loading lumber and was a holdover of the 32 foot cars that were popular 20 years prior as the 40 foot car had recently become the standard length.

The first car is a standard wooden box car and has Arch Bar trucks under it. As mentioned before, it most likely carried sacks of ore as the CR&NW used both flat cars and box cars for the commodity, of course it carried other goods on that railroad. The second car was originally built as an insulated box car-an early day refrigerated box car that used large blocks of ice to keep the inside of the car cold. This car would have carried everything from meat, vegetables and other perishables from Cordova to the Kennecott and all points in-between. After life on the CR&NW the Anchorage shops, possibly carpenters from the B&B department converted the car into a bunk car. This would have been used by MOW crews working on the line in very remote places and would have been very warm due to the insulation.

Info on these cars are vague such as the retirement dates and mechanical info, along with the date of acquirement from the CR&NW to the ARR. I believe these cars would have been retired in the 1950s when the Troop Sleepers were flooding the rosters in both freight and out fit service and languished until the Alaska Yukon Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society obtained these cars probably in the 1960s.

The current state of the box car looks decent, though it could use some love with the sides and the roof most likely as it is wood. The insulated car is in the worst shape of the two and needs love and soon. One side has a significant portion of rot and has weather coming inside the car. But aside that, the fact that these cars are now well over 100 years old making these the oldest pieces of railroad equipment on site. The fact that these two cars are survivors of a railroad dead for 82 years is also amazing as these may be the only surviving cars from the CR&NW. These two cars serving two different railroads, ending their career on the Alaska Railroad are full of Alaskan history and are gems in their own rights. Imagine seeing these cars behind a CR&NW locomotive or an ARR Panama Mogul…