Trains of sugar beet cars hauled raw beets from growers fields to processing plants to make refined sugar.

General American Transportation built these cars for the Southern Pacific Railroad in November 1949. They had wooden sides instead of metal to keep the beets from cooking. Cars like this brought sugar beets to the Spreckels Sugar plant at the northwest corner of McQueen and Riggs Roads in Chandler. The plant opened in 1967 and processed beets into liquid sugar, then closed in 1984 when soft drink manufacturers switched to using less expensive high fructose corn syrup.

Spreckels parent company Imperial Sugar acquired this car in the 1990s and donated it to the Western Pacific Railroad Museum at Portola, California, who in turn transferred it to this museum in July 2019.

Originally built as a class G-50-23 drop-bottom gondola with an inside length of 41 feet, it had upper extensions added in 1964 to increase its capacity, bringing the inside height to 9 feet. These cars were sometimes referred to as "beet racks" because in the 1940s, beets were transported in racks mounted on flat cars, and the name stuck. At one time Southern Pacific had over 1,500 sugar beet cars.

The Spreckels plant was just three miles south of Tumbleweed Park. Unit trains of about 50 sugar beet cars traveled down the Chandler Branch two or three times a week during the season. Besides liquid sugar for the soft drink manufacturers, a small amount of granular sugar was produced for the local market. Hauling beets by trains ended in the 1990s.

Being a vintage car with plain bearings (brass blocks lubricated by oil), it could not travel to Arizona on its own wheels due to modern safety regulations. Plans to load it on a railroad flat car fell through, and highway trucking became the alternative. Finally, after two winters where snowfall shut down the Portola museum, shipping quotes matched funds raised and the car arrived by lowboy trailer at the museum on July 10, 2019. This car was painted in 2020 as part of an Eagle Scout community service project.

	7/11/2019 - Car as delivered.
	7/11/2019 - Plywood extensions were added to the top to increase the volume (capacity).

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