On Monday while driving to my camper in South Anchorage I decided to take a different route that took me down 100th Ave. There is a Spenard Builders Supply (SBS) close to the Alaska Railroad (ARR) mainline (Spenard Builders Supply is an Alaskan hardware chain) and behind one of their buildings I saw the tail end of an old box car. In that split second I could see it was a WWII troop sleeper/box car and what really made it noticeable was a "ribbon" near the top. Well I knew it wasn't a regular box car.

In 1973 the ARR shops in Anchorage took 30 troop sleeper/box cars and converted them into Hi-Cube box cars. They took other standard troop box cars and cut the top halves off and welded them to the roofless cars that were being converted. At the same time the doors were also built the same way as the car bodies, cut and welded together. The Allied Full Cushion trucks were replaced with 70 ton Bettendorf solid bearing trucks.

For an unknown amount of time the 8000 class (8000 to 8029) as they became numbered were used in interchange service and were barged to and from Seattle, but these cars started to rust badly around the welds due to salt spay.

Legend has it that the train crews hated bringing any of the 8000s into Whittier because of the high winds in Bear Valley where the tall cars would act like a sail and nearly fall off. Some did from what I've heard but I'm sure an old head can confirm this. By the late 1980s early 1990s most of these cars were retired with one car, 8019 in MOW/Engineering service as late as 2001. In the fall of 2001 8019 was donated to the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry in Wasilla.

Now to my find. I came back to SBS a couple hours later and asked permission to go into the yard to get my photos which was granted. When I got out there I was surprised to find not one, not two, but three Hi-Cubes, and they were on their trucks! Fully intact to boot! A long time employee whom I talked to was out there and let me take a couple of interior pictures of a car and said they have been here longer than he had worked there of 20 years. It turns out the cars are sitting on the spur that served SBS, now long severed from the mainline. The company bought these cars to use as storage units and were spotted here and have sat ever since.

The cars on site are 8021, 8028 and 8026 in order. They look to be in good shape for their age and judging by the car data sheets, they had their last COT&S in 1987, so its a good possibility they were retired by 1992 when the 5 year certification ran out. The bearings that I looked at were still good, no scoring and still had journal oil. The lettering and numbers are legible and you can see there isn't much rust which tells me these may have not been used in interchange service or at least they didn't make many trips. Also 8021 is the only one of the bunch with the large herald. The shops got tired of making such a large herald so the last cars didn't get them.

Another interesting thing are the trucks. If you look closely you can make out the original railroad where the trucks came from D.&.R.G.W. R.R. This tells me the trucks came from the 40 foot 13xxx gondolas that were originally built for the D.&.R.G.W.R.R. These gondolas were bought in 1947 and a few are still in service today. With these cars discovered there are now seven known in existence with two in Seward, three in Anchorage, one in the museum in Wasilla, and one that is a cabin near Talkeetna, with four still retaining their trucks and knuckles.

For those who model ARR in HO scale Walthers made some converted box cars including Alaska Railroad, you can build your own Hi-Cube cars like the Alaska Railroad for your own unique box cars. Thanks to Mike and the front counter associate at the 100th Ave SBS for granting me permission to access these cars.