The Silverton photo of the boxcar 3543 is of interest. The cut out painting on top of the car was done by local artist Vern Parker and his son Allen continues to run a glass blowing shop in Silverton. The car was donated by the D&RGW to the Silverton Chamber for use as an information booth. I saw it in 1957 not long after the railroad delivered it to the end of the track on 12th Street. It was then pulled off the end of the track and sat in the dirt for a while until moved to where this photo shows it in the middle of the highway wye at the entrance to town. This was a bad order car that had truss rod problems if I recall correctly and would not have been repaired, even in 1957.
The chamber never fully used the car as there were access problems off the state highway and no parking at the wye, so when the Phillips 66 station was developed adjacent to the wye in the mid-60s, and they purchased the 2 standard gauge tank cars that were put on narrow gauge trucks, the chamber and gas station owner agreed to make a display train at the gas station, adding the boxcar to the south end of the track. The next bright idea of the chamber was to take the SN caboose 17 that was mouldering away in back of the Western Colorado Power office building and make that into a chamber booth and they hauled that into town and added it to the new "train." It sat on 2 wheel sets donated from the D&RGW but there was no under carriage under the car. Subsequent to that, in the early 70s, the town developed public restrooms at what we call Potty Park and the chamber decided to move their caboose to that location where it served as an information booth off and on for about 25 years. This is the caboose we are now restoring, but the boxcar remained at the gas station.
Fast forward to the purchase of the 2 tank cars by the D&S for use in the fire train, where they are now, the Phillips 66 people assumed they owned the boxcar as well and sold it to the railroad along with the tank cars. The 3543 was moved down to the Silverton depot and it became part of the "Freight Yard Museum." In all this, the chamber had a collective memory loss that they owned the car, the gas station owner in Durango probably assumed anything on his property was his, and the railroad took possession of a car that still rightfully belongs to the chamber. But the car is still in Silverton, having gained an extra 55 years of life it would not have had with the D&RGW.
