Newly repainted, the caboose hasn't yet received the Great Northern decal nor the stenciling which it bore a short time ago. Some older photos of the caboose show it in its previous paint job, bearing the decal and the X 176 marking. Apparently renumbered X 321 at some time, it was also renumbered 11470 by the Burlington Northern when the Great Northern was absorbed by it. A steel sided cupola caboose, it was, to the best of our knowledge, built in 1962.
Once known as the
Hillyard Fire and Rail Museum, it seems now to be referred to simply as the
Hillyard Heritage Museum. Along the old Great Northern tracks on the eastern edge of Hillyard, it is an outdoor museum with indoor displays of railroad and firefighting memorabilia. To date the museum consists of two boxcars, a 1942 Pullman Sleeper Car, a really cool old and tiny diesel switching engine, an ex Great Northern caboose, X 176, and a LaFrance Pumper, circa 1960. The LaFrance doesn't seem to be on display as yet, probably awaiting restoration. There is mention that they also have, stashed away somewhere, a 1959 Pirsch fire engine.
The inside displays are within the caboose and the box cars, consisting of whatever odds and sods the museum has managed to salvage from the extinct railway and the equally extinct Hillyard Fire Department. The museum is operated by the
Hillyard Heritage Museum Society, which was established in 2004, its goal to "
collect and preserve information and artifacts of historic significance". The museum itself was established in 1995 by the Spokane Fire Station Museum.