51 East Fort Street, Shippensburg, PA 17257

along the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail

OPEN 365 DAYS A YEAR, SUNRISE TO SUNSET

In late 2019, The Conrail Historical Society inquired with CSX Transportation about the availability of an ex-Conrail 86-foot boxcar that could house The CRHS’s growing collection of Conrail archival material and make it accessible to researchers and the public. CSX graciously sourced former Conrail X67 boxcar #243880 as it was being retired from active service and donated it to The CRHS in January of 2020. To learn more about the history of this boxcar, click here.

An agreement was reached to permanently relocate the #243880 to the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail trailhead in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, adjacent to the existing Penn Central boxcar that houses the Cumberland Valley Railroad Museum. In March of 2020, The CRHS received a $100,000 tourism grant from the Cumberland Area Economic Development Corporation / Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau for this project. On August 22, 2021, Dave’s Truck Repair moved the car by road roughly 10 miles from its temporary storage location in Chambersburg to the trailhead in Shippensburg. This is one of the largest railcars ever moved over the road in North America! The car was fully restored to Conrail paint over Labor Day weekend in 2021. On February 1, 2022, the car was moved the final 300 feet across a soccer field, reunited with its trucks, and placed on the final piece of panel track.

Throughout 2022 and early 2023, a new interior was framed out, an HVAC system was installed to climate control the space, and a state-of-the-art museum was developed to display a portion of The CRHS’s artifact collection. A room at one end of the car was built to house The CRHS’s extensive archives, and the entire boxcar was fitted with a timed lock to permit sunrise-to-sundown operation 365 days a year. The Conrail Museum opened the public following a brief ceremony on April 1, 2023 (the 47th anniversary of Conrail’s formation).

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