This 1909 wooden box car carried sacks of refined sugar in Utah, and mining supplies in southern Arizona.

American Car & Foundry built it for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. After carrying refined sugar from plants around Salt Lake City for many years, this car was sold in 1948 to the Tucson, Cornelia & Gila Bend Railroad in Arizona. There it carried supplies from Gila Bend to the Phelps Dodge copper mine at Ajo.

After the open pit mine closed in 1985, this car remained on the property for another twenty years. A former mine employee bought it in 1996, but a property cleanup placed it in peril of being scrapped, so the owner donated it to the museum in 2005.

This 36-foot (inside length) wood-side box car was built at the AC&F plant in St. Charles, Missouri, as Denver & Rio Grande number 62470, one of 1,500 in a new car order. It had a steel underframe and steel superstructure covered with wood siding inside and out. When the D&RG became the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1921, the car kept the same number.

A 1926 rebuilding replaced the ends, trucks, and draft gear. The steel underframe had a 40-year lifespan for interchange service which would run out in 1949, so in 1948 this car was sold to the TC&GB who changed its number to 204.

The TC&GB railroad was built by the New Cornelia Copper Company in 1915 after copper ore was discovered in the Ajo area. The railroad brought in equipment for digging the open pit mine, then carried out processed copper. Phelps Dodge took over the operation in 1931 and ran it until the pit closed in 1985. The railroad ceased operating at that time, but re-opened temporarily from 1995 to 1998 so the Ajo smelter could be dismantled. Much of the mine trackage was removed, but as of this writing (late 2020) the rails still remain mostly in place between Gila Bend and Ajo.

This box car was one of three remaining on the mine property. All three were purchased by Dr. Sokol, a former mine doctor, but during a property cleanup in 2005, he was asked to remove the cars or they would be scrapped. He contacted the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum in Tucson, and homes were found for all three cars. They were dismantled and trucked to their destinations, one to SATM, one to Arizona Railway Museum, and the third to Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles. This one arrived via lowboy trailer at the museum′s Armstrong Park location on Erie Street on October 28, 2005, then the Union Pacific Railroad moved it south to the museum′s new Tumbleweed Park location on Ryan Road, along with the rest of the fleet, in 2006.

	Photo of the car in service February 1969.
	Photo of car in Ajo on 6/13/2005.
	Photo of car on 2-27-13.  Sides have been replaced and repainted.

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