Cook – Utility Box Car

Ron Daniel while a Southwest Florida Water management employee discovered an abandoned box car in the green swamp southeast of Brooksville in Sumter County. It was hauled to the Brooksville Russell Street Train Depot and sat there for several years as plans to renovate the depot progressed. In 1995, the Landmar Group LLC., leased the boxcar for five years at $1,000 a year and spent $5,000 to refurbish it to serve as a sales office for a proposed upscale housing estate south of Brooksville on US41. The work car was originally owned by Cummer Sons Cypress Lumber Company which cut timber in the area of the “Green Swamp” and processed it in a modern facility the company built at Lacoochee until the company moved its operations to the Everglades. 

The work car’s (Cook & Utility Car) normal function was to transport daily workers to the work site but the box car could be used provide space for cooking and eating, sleeping, office work and machinery operations. Despite its abandonment for more than sixty years, some of the original material remains to this day i.e. the flooring, ceiling smoke outlets for the cook stove, framing and some steel bracing. Except for its size, the layout and construction of this box car is exactly how the earliest freight cars were built. 

The restored specialized box car is on display at the Brooksville Train Depot. The car was once used along the Withlacoochee River in Pasco and Sumter counties in an area located in the Green Swamp.