Box Car

The Missouri Pacific boxcar is a 60′ “high cube” boxcar.  It was formerly a retail swimsuit and swim gear shop in New Braunfels located on Loop 337 across from the Harley Davidson store.  It was donated to the museum in 2010.  The members of the New Braunfels Historical Railroad and Modeling Society completely renovated the boxcar.  The wood plank floor is original to the boxcar.

The boxcar now contains the museum’s 28-foot N scale model railroad layout.

Located on the parking lot side of the boxcar, visitors can see an example of a “Herby” drawing.  For a quarter of a century, chalk drawings of a sleeping figure in a sombrero under a palm tree, signed by Herby, appeared on freight cars. The drawings became so well known that MOPAC built two Herby cars designated Herb-1 and painted with the palm tree and sleeping figure and the slogan “Help Every Railroader Be Injury Exempt.” The identity of the artist was a mystery until 1980 when Herbert A. Meyer, retired as a switchman for the Terminal Railroad Association in St Louis and announced he was the source of the iconic rail graffiti.  He estimated he applied his drawing on up to 700,000 boxcars between 1955 and 1980.