Railhead: Cheyenne Railroad Historian Rushing To Save Abandoned Rail Line Before It Disappears

Railhead: Cheyenne Railroad Historian Rushing To Save Abando...:   Cheyenne Railroad Historian Rushing To Save Abandoned Rail Line Before It Disappears

Cheyenne Railroad Historian Rushing To Save Abandoned Rail Line Before It Disappears

 

Cheyenne Railroad Historian Rushing To Save Abandoned Rail Line Before It Disappears

Railhead: The Nightcrawler. The train from Denver, Colorado, to Billings, Montana.

Railhead: The Nightcrawler. The train from Denver, Colorado...:   I had no idea that this is what this train was called.  Thanks go out to MKTH for letting me know! I've been looking into local passen...

The Nightcrawler. The train from Denver, Colorado, to Billings, Montana.

 

I had no idea that this is what this train was called.  Thanks go out to MKTH for letting me know!

I've been looking into local passenger train travel as part of my efforts with a novel.  What I found is that I knew very little about it.  Probably more than your average bear, but that's about it.  I'd long assumed that a person could board a train in Casper in 1916 and take the train to Douglas or Cheyenne, and then return that evening, but the more I looked into it, that was just an assumption.

I'm not the one who figured out how it really worked. That goes to MKTH.  the result is fascinating.

It turns out I was right sort of. The Burlington Northern ran a train from Denver Colorado, to Billings Montana, and vice versa, daily.  This article takes a look at it.

What I imagined, for novel purposes, was boarding in Casper, and traveling to Douglas.  I may, as I work at it, make it Cheyenne.

Union Station, Denver Colorado

Union Station, Denver Colorado

Union Station as viewed from in front of Denver's Oxford Hotel.

 

 

Anyhow, this is a really interesting article and give a really good look at what traveling on the Denver to Billings night train was like, complete with stops for food, which is something I hadn't considered.  It also picked up mail, and my source indicates, cream, something I also hadn't figured, but that may explain why the creamery my family owned was just one block from the Burlington Northern.  In fact it probably does.

Jersey Creamery Inc.

The trip took 19 hours.  It take 8 hours today by car, assuming good weather conditions, and not figuring in stops for food, etc.  The train moved about 34 miles an hour.

We'll look at the return trip first.  The train having come up from Cheyenne boarded there at 12:49 in the morning.  Uff.

It got to Casper at 6:20 in the morning, having made a couple of stops along the way.

Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming

What I imagined?  

Not really.  And I also had no idea that there was a major cafe right off the railroad.  This article deals with the early 1960s, but I can see that some variant of it was there decades prior.  That makes piles of sense, really.  Of course there would be.  How else would people eat if they were making the long journey?  

It simply hadn't occurred to me.

In my imaginary trip., that'd be it.  If I stuck with the Douglas variant of this, my protagonist would be boarding the train in the early, early morning hours and get in a couple of fitful hours of sleep, probably interrupted by a stop in little Glenrock.  Indeed, this train stopped everywhere to pick up mail, and a few passengers.

What about the other way around?

Well that was a day trip, but as we can see, the 19 hours the train traveled in total meat that it took a good 6.5 hours to travel just from Cheyenne to Casper.  Going the other way would mean the same thing, and likely a bit in reverse.  The 6.5 hour trip from Cheyenne to Casper was the second major leg of the trip (it'd still stop in numerous small towns in between), the first being Denver to Cheyenne.  Going the other way around meant that the Cheyenne to Denver leg was about five hours.  The article notes that the train actually arrived from Billings 40 minutes before its 7:00 p.m. departure.  So it arrived, more or less, at 6:00 p.m. and changed crews.  That would have meant that it left Cheyenne, on the way to Denver, at about 1:00 p.m. or so, which makes sense.  Passengers traveling all the way to Denver would have eaten lunch there.

By extension, however, that meant that the train left Casper at about 6;00 in the morning, approximately.

These times are almost unimaginable now.  When we had good air travel to Denver I'd frequently board United Express here about 6;00 a.m. and be in Denver about 8:30, and take the train downtown and be to work by 9.  I'd be back in Casper on the redeye about 10:00, or if I was lucky, 6:00.

And when I go to Cheyenne, I drive.  Normally that takes me a little under three hours.  I haven't stayed overnight in Cheyenne for years, although I recently had an instance which should really cause me to.

Anyhow, if I'm looking at 1916, why not just drive?

Well, in 1916 most Americans, including most Wyomingites, didn't own automobiles, and those who did, didn't normally make long trips with them.  They frankly weren't that reliable, even though they were simple.  Roads also tended to be primitive, and not really maintained for weather.  Could a person have driven from Casper to Cheyenne in a Model T, the most likely car they would have had?  Yes, but it wouldn't have been any faster.  It may well have been slower, quite frankly, as well as much riskier.

Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps. Blog Mirror: Welcome to The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in Wyoming!

Railhead: Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps. Blog...: Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps. : A long time ago, I published this item, which I'll post in its entirety down below, rega...

Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps. Blog Mirror: Welcome to The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in Wyoming!

Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps.: A long time ago, I published this item, which I'll post in its entirety down below, regarding a railroad map from 1916.  I could not lon...

I was sent this great model railroad website:

 Welcome to The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in Wyoming!

Wow, what a model layout.  It's fantastic.

Included on it, is this map, which we're directly linking in.:

Look at the pile of named spots on the rail line.

Some of these I recognize, some I don't.  The Colorado and Southern rail line from Glendo to Cheyenne is now a Burlington Northern rail line, I'd note.  The line running right up to Yellowstone National Park is a complete surprise.

The line running from Arminto in this depiction does not go into Shoshoni, and avoid the Wind River Canyon.  I was unaware that had been done.

Really interesting.

As are the model lines that this fellow is putting together.

Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps.

Railhead: Looking at, and for, railroad maps.: A long time ago, I published this item, which I'll post in its entirety down below, regarding a railroad map from 1916.  I could not lon...

Looking at, and for, railroad maps.

A long time ago, I published this item, which I'll post in its entirety down below, regarding a railroad map from 1916.  I could not longer find it, but the item noted that later maps demonstrated the same thing.  Here's one I found from 1918.

Ths map also covered motor vehicle highways, which I was also going to try to look up.  Frankly, the highways are much easier to read.

Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Railroad Map, 1915: The Wyoming State Library has published a series of historic maps of the state, including railroad maps.  I'd been hoping to find one fo...

Wyoming Railroad Map, 1915

The Wyoming State Library has published a series of historic maps of the state, including railroad maps.  I'd been hoping to find one for 1915 (book research, which I've been turning to again, which probably makes this blog a bit more like it originally was, and a bit more dull for the few people who actually stop in here), and low and behold, they had one.

1915 Wyoming Railroad Map.

Interesting map, it shows some things that I'd wondered about.

It shows, for one thing, that Casper was served by the Burlington Northern, which I new, and the Chicago and North Western, which I sort of knew, but it was celled the Great North Western in its later years.  It served Casper up until probably about 25 years ago or so.  There's hardly any remnant of it here now, and its old rail line here was converted to a trail through the town.  The old depot is a nice looking office building, but I don't know if that building dates back to 1915.  I doubt it.  I don't think that the Burlington Northern one isn't that old either.

 

Former Chicago and North Western depot in Casper.

 Burlington Northern Depot in Casper.

A really interesting aspect of this is that it shows two parallel lines actually running from where the railroads met in Douglas.  I knew that there were two depots in Douglas, and I knew there were remnants of the North West line east of town, but I didn't realize that the two lines actually ran astride each other, more or less (within a few miles of each other), from Douglas to Powder River, where they joined. The depot at Powder River is no longer there.

 

Former depot for one of the railroads in Douglas, now used as a railroad interpretive center.

 

 The other depot in Douglas, now a restaurant called "The Depot".

After that, interestingly, the Chicago and North Western ran to Shoshoni, while the Burlington Northern did not.  Now, a local short line runs to Shoshoni and links in somewhere with the  BN, but I don't know where.  Not in Powder River, that's for sure.  The BN still runs north through the Wind River Canyon, however, taking a turn at Shoshoni, which did not at that time, still passing through Lysite as it then did.  No rail line runs from Shoshoni to Riverton, and on to Hudson and Lander like this map shows.  And as with one of the Douglas depots, the old Riverton line is now a restaurant, although I've apparently failed to photograph that one (note to self, I suppose).  It's pretty amazing to think, really, that Fremont County's rail service has really declined pretty significantly in the past century, with Lander no longer being a terminus.  

Rail facilties in Lysite, which are probably nearly as old as the map being discussed here.

Going the other way, the results are even more surprising.  Orin Junction is still there, and is still a railroad junction, but just for the Burlington Northern.  The railroad still runs east to Lusk, but that's a Burlington Northern line today, apparently running on the old path of the Chicago and North Western.  Going south east, that line is still there up to Harville, but from the there what's indicated as a Colorado & "South 'N" line is now a Union Pacific line.

I honestly don't know, and really should, how far south that UP line runs, which shows that this is one of those areas of my state's history and present that I don't know that much about.  It's funny how something like this can really surprise you, and make you realize that you don't know aas much as you think.  I know that the BN runs as far south as Chugwater today, and further south than that, but I don't know if it runs into Cheyenne like it once did (or rather the Colorado did).  The main line of the UP runs through southern Wyoming and there's a huge yard in Cheyenne, so presumably there's a junction there somewhere.

The former Union Pacific depot in Cheyenne, now, of course, a restaurant and a museum.

This map in fact answered a question for me which I had, which is that if you wanted to travel from Casper to Cheyenne on a timely basis, what route would the train take. Well, now I know.  In 1915, you'd take either of the railroads serving Casper east to Orin Junction, and then take the BN south to Hartville.  From there, you'd take the Colorado south to Cheyenne.  From there, the extensive UP lines opened up the path west, south and east.

It's also interesting to see some lines that I knew once existed, but which are now defunct, shown here on the map.  The Saratoga & Encampment, for example, is shown.  I didn't know it was that told, but I should have.  The Colorado & Eastern running from Laramie up to the Snowies is also shown.  I knew that some railroad had done that, and that the lines are still there (a shortline serving skiers was attempted a few years ago, but no longer runs), but I didn't know what line that was.

Very interesting stuff.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Postscript

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the map for 1930, the last one they had up.  The rail lines were the same in 1930 as they were in 1915.

That shouldn't, I suppose, surprise me really.  For one thing, all the basic service lines appear to have been in by 1915 (or earlier, I'll  have to see if there's an earlier rail map).  And the last 1930 map was a "travel" map, not specifically a rail line map, like the 1915 one was, so perhaps it may have omitted any newer lines, although I doubt it.  Of interest, that travel map for 1930 only showed rail lines, not roads, so the presumption was obvious that if you were going to be doing much traveling, it was going to be by rail. 

Postscript II

Another thing that occurs to me from looking at this map is the extent of rail service, particularly passenger service, but all rail service in general, at a time when the state's population was less than half of what it present is. Very extensive.  Quite a remarkable change, compared to now, when some of these lines and many of the smaller railroads no longer exist here at all.

Of course, that no doubt reflects the massive changes in transportation we've seen, the improvement of roads, and of course the huge improvement in automobiles over this period.

Railhead: Sleeper Cars.

Railhead: Sleeper Cars.: I've started to look into sleeper cars a bit, connected with the purpose of Lex Anteinternet.    In doing so, I've learned that I do...

Sleeper Cars.

I've started to look into sleeper cars a bit, connected with the purpose of Lex Anteinternet.   In doing so, I've learned that I don't know hardly anything about them.

Pullman sleeping car, late 19th Century, early 20th Century

For one thing, I didn't know that they were an introduction, in the US, via George Pullman, of the Pullman Company.  I was aware of Pullman porters, an all black occupation, but I guess I never put the two together.

I also didn't realize how spartan they could be, as i the photograph from above.  My mental image of them is really based on movies like North By Northwest, which depicts really nice and private ones, and there were pretty luxurious sleeper cars at that. But there were also pretty plain ones, which makes sense in the era when town to town transportation was by train.  Not everyone was on a holiday by any means.

Another thing I didn't appreciate really is that the cars usually didn't belong to the railroad itself  One website on the Union Pacific notes:

How many sleeping cars did UP own over its lifetime? A quick answer would be 55 heavyweight clerestory-roof sleepers, and 191 lightweight sleepers. But a definitive number has two important considerations; the difference between operated, leased, and owned, and the difference between heavyweight and lightweight.

The difference between a heavyweight car and lightweight car is mostly the era it was built, rather than the material it was built from, meaning that cars of an earlier era were built with heavyweight materials, while newer, more modern cars were built using lighter materials. Heavyweight cars were built using riveted carbon steel body-frame construction, and concrete floors. Most were built in the 1910s and 1920s and due to their weight, were equipped with six-wheel truck and wheel assemblies. These have been known as heavyweight cars since the 1940s to distinguish them from the lightweight cars built using either much lighter aluminum or welded alloy steel, or combinations of both. Lightweight cars had non-opening windows, and full-width arch roof. Most were built after 1935 and were equipped with four-wheel truck and wheel assemblies.

Union Pacific did not own any sleeping cars until the government's forced breakup of Pullman in 1944. Until that date, all lightweight sleeper cars used by Union Pacific on their trains were "operated" by UP, but owned by The Pullman Company. After that date, sleeper cars operated on UP trains were either owned by UP, or owned by UP and its SP and C&NW partners; all were leased back to Pullman for operation.

I should have known that.

Pullman's hold on the industry was so pronounced that sleeping cars used in World War One belonged to them.

All of this no doubt just scratches the surface of this topic, about which I'm nearly completely ignorant.

Railhead: Edge of the Burlington Northern Yard, Casper Wyoming

Edge of the Burlington Northern Yard, Casper Wyoming

Railhead: Rail Features. Thyra Thompson Building, Casper Wyoming

Railhead: Rail Features. Thyra Thompson Building, Casper Wyo...: 

Rail Features. Thyra Thompson Building, Casper Wyoming.

The State of Wyoming recently completed the construction of a massive new state office building, the Thyra Thompson Building, in Casper.  All of the state's administrative bodies, except for the district and circuit courts, are housed there.

The building does house, however, the Chancery Court for the entire state, a new court that's only recently been established.

The building is built right over what had been the Great Northwest rail yard in Casper, which was still an active, although not too active, rail yard into my teens.  I can't really recall when they abandoned the line, but it was abandoned.

In putting the building in, and extending the Platte River Parkway through it, the State did a nice job of incorporating some rail features so that there's a memory of what the location had been.

They also put in some historical plaques, which are nice. The curved arch at this location, moreover, is the location of the old turntable.  It was a small one, which I hate to admit that I crossed over when I was a teenager, a dangerous thing to do.

Painted Bricks: Train mural, Casper Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Train mural, Casper Wyoming: 

Train mural, Casper Wyoming

This train mural is on the Platte River Parkway that runs through downtown Casper along a rails to trails easement.   The building is the 321 Art Works building, formerly an industrial warehouse.

Railhead: The not so great train robbery.

Railhead: The not so great train robbery.:

The not so great train robbery.

CN police, RCMP investigating Monday train robbery in Brocklehurst

Mar 28, 2023 | 1:36 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops RCMP are assisting CN Rail police as they investigate a train robbery.

Spokesperson Cpl. Crystal Evelyn says RCMP were called just after 7:00 a.m. Monday (March 27). The incident took place at the junction of Tranquille Road and Ord Road in Brocklehurst.

It’s not known what was taken.

CFJC Today.

It’s not known what was taken.

Eh? 

Railhead: Mutzerbahn - "Cat-aclysm" in Such station, waiting...

Railhead: Mutzerbahn - "Cat-aclysm" in Such station, waiting...: 

Mutzerbahn - "Cat-aclysm" in Such station, waiting for a model train to ...

Somethings you just can't resist.

The Aerodrome: 2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition

The Aerodrome: 2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition:   

2021 Reflections: The Transportation Edition

 

We don't tend to post original commentary on this blog, but on our others, but given the topics, it's appropriate here.

And this will be a dual post, appearing on both Railhead and The Aerodrome simultaneously.

Like some, as in all, of our reflection posts that have gone up on our companion blogs, this entry is impacted by COVID 19, as everything is. 

It's also heavily impacted by politics.

And of course, COVID 19 itself has become strangely political.

The onset of the terrible pandemic shut down nearly every economy in the world, save for those in areas with economies so underdeveloped that they couldn't shut down.  That impacted the world's transportation networks in a major way, and it still is.  COVID 19 also became a factor in the last election, with a large section of the American public becoming extremely unhappy with the Trump Administration's response to the pandemic.  Added to the mix, heightened concerns over global warming have finally started to accelerate an American response to the threat.

All of which gets us to transportation, the topic of these blogs in some ways.

For at least a decade, it's been obvious that electric automobile are going to replace fossil fuel powered ones. There are, of course, deniers, but the die is cast and that's where things will go.  

It's also become obvious that technology is going to take truck driver out of their seats, and put a few, albeit a very few, in automated offices elsewhere where they'll monitor remote fleets of trucks.  Or at least that's the thought.

The Biden Administration, moreover, included money for railroads in is large infrastructure bill.  This has developed in various ways, but the big emphasis has been on expanding Amtrak.

Amtrak Expansion. Cheyenne to Denver, and beyond!?

I have real problems, I'll admit, with the scope of the proposed infrastructure spending proposals that President Biden is looking at, but if they go forward, I really hope we do see rail service restored (and that's what it would be) between Cheyenne and Denver.

The plan proposes to invest $80B in Amtrak.  Yes, $80B.  Most of that will go to repairs, believe it or not, as the Amtrak has never been a favorite of the Republican Party, which in its heard of hearts feels that the quasi public rail line is simply a way of preserving an obsolete mode of transportation at the Government's expense.  But rail has been receiving a lot of attention recently for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that in a now carbon conscious era, it's the greenest mode of transportation taht we have, something the commercial rail lines have been emphasizing.

Indeed, if the American public wasn't afraid of a nuclear power the same way that four year olds are afraid of monsters that live under their beds, it could be greener yet, and there's some talk of now supporting nuclear power among serious informed environmentalists.  A campaign to push that, called the Solutionary Rail, is now active.  We'll deal with that some other time.

Here we're noting that we're hopeful that if this does go through, and as noted we have real reservations about this level of expenditure, that Amtrak does put in a passenger line from Cheyenne to Pueblo.  

A line connecting Ft. Collins to Denver has been a proposal in Colorado for quite a while and has some backing there.  The same line of thought has already included Cheyenne.  This has a lot to do with trying to ease the burgeoning traffic problem this area experiences due to the massive population growth in Colorado.  Wyomingites, I suppose, should therefore approach this with some caution as it would tie us into the Front Range communities in a way that we might not want to be.  Still, it's an interesting idea.

It's one that for some reason I think will fall through, and I also suspect it'll receive no support in Wyoming. Still, it's interesting.

During  the past year, locally, flights to Casper were put in jeopardy. This was a byproduct of COVID 19, as air travel dropped off to nearly nothing, nationwide, and that made short flights economically iffy.

Before the pandemic, Delta had cut back its flight schedule to Salt Lake, which is a major Delta hub. This caused its bookings to drop down anyway.  I used to fly to Salt Lake in the morning, pre COVID, do business, and then fly back that evening.  Once Delta cuts its flights back, however, that became impossible.

That meant that Delta, at that point, had aced itself out of the day trip business market, which it seemingly remains unaware of for some reason.  COVID hurt things further.  At that point it threatened to abandon its service unless it could receive some assistance.  The county and the local municipalities rose to the occasion.

Delta receives a subsidty to continue serving the Natrona County International Airport

 I'm really not too certain what my view on this is.  Overall, I suppose it's a good thing.

Delta is one of the two carriers, relying on regional contractors, serving the Natrona County International Airport, and hence all of Central Wyoming.  It flies to and from Salt Lake, while United flies to and from Denver.  

It used to have great connections.  A businessman in Casper could take the red eye to Salt Lake and then catch the late flight back. That's no longer possible  Frankly, depending upon what you're doing, it's nearly as easy to drive to Salt Lake now.

And perhaps that's cutting into their passenger list, along with COVID 19, although I'm told that flights have been full recently.

Anyhow, losing Delta would be a disaster. We'd be down to just United.  Not only would that mean that there was no competition, it'd place us in a shaky position, maybe, as the overall viability of air travel starts to reduce once a carrier pulls out.

A couple of legislatures ago there was an effort to subsidize intrastate air travel, and I think it passed.  While Wyomingites howl about "socialism", as we loosely and fairly inaccurately describe it, we're hugely okay with transportation being subsidized.  We likely need to be, or it'll cut us off from the rest of everything more than we already are, and that has a certain domino effect.

I don't know what the overall solution to this problem is, assuming there is one, but whatever it is, subsidies appear likely to be part of it for the immediate future . . . and maybe there are some avenues open there we aren't pursuing and should be.

At the same time, infrastructure money became available for the state's airports as well.

Wyoming's Airports to receive $15.1M in Infrastructure Money

The Federal funds can be used for terminals, runways and parking lots and the like.

Of Wyoming airports, Jackson's will get the most, receiving $3.38M.  Natrona County International Airport gets the second-largest amount at $1.34M.  Natrona  County's airport will use the funds for electrical work.

So flights were kept and improvements will be made.

Recently, pilot pay has been tripled, albeit only for one month.

United Airlines Triples Pilot Pay for January.

This due to an ongoing pilot shortage, which has been heightened by the Omicron variant of COVID 19.

I.e, United is trying to fill the pilot seats this month.

So, that's what happened.

Now, what might we hope will happen?

1.  Electric Avenue

Everything always seem really difficult until its done, and then not so much.

Which doesn't discount difficulty. 

The Transcontinental Railraod was created in the US through the American System, something that's been largely forgotten.  Private railroads didn't leap at the chance to put in thousands of miles of rail line across uninhabited territory.  No, the Federal Government caused the rail line to come about by providing thousands of acres of valuable land to two start up companies and then guarding the workers with the Army, at taxpayer expense.

We note that as, right now, railroad are already the "greenest" means of transportation in the US.  They could be made more so by electrifying them, just as the Trans Siberian Railway is.  At the same time, if a program to rapidly convert energy production in the US to nuclear was engaged in, the US transportation system could be made basically "green" in very little time.  Probably five years or less.

If we intend to "build back better", we ought to do that.

This would, I'd note, largely shift long transportation back to its pre 1960s state.  Mostly by rail.  Trucking came in because the US decided, particularly during the Eisenhower Administration, to subsidize massive coast to coast highways.  

For the most part, we no longer really need them.

Oh, we need highways, but with advances in technology of all sorts, we need them a lot less than we once did.  And frankly, we never really needed them way that the Federal Government maintained we did.  It's been a huge financial burden on the taxpayers, and its subsidized one industry over another.

Yes, this is radical, but we should do it.

Now, before a person either get too romantic, or too weepy, over this, a couple of things.

One is that we already have an 80,000 teamster shortage for trucking.  I.e., yes, this plan would put a lot of drivers out of work, but its a dying occupation anyway.  Indeed, in recent years its become on that is oddly increasingly filled with Eastern Europeans who seemingly take it up as its a job they can occupy with little training.  The age of the old burly American double shifting teamster is long over.  

And to the extent it isn't, automated trucks are about to make it that way for everyone.

The trains, we'd note, will be automated too.  It's inevitable. They'll be operated like giant train sets from a central location. Something that's frankly easier, and safer, to do, than it would be for semi tractors.

2.  Subsidized local air travel

It's going to take longer to electrify aircraft, particularly those that haul people, but electrification of light aircraft is already being worked on.  The Air Force has, moreover, been working on alternative jet fuels.

Anyhow, if we must subsidize something in long distance transportation, that should be local air travel.  Its safe, effective and vital for local economies.  I don't care if that is quasi socialist.  It should be done.

3. The abandoned runways.

Locally, I'd like to see some of that infrastructure money go to the extra runway or runways at the NatCo airport being repaired.  I know that they were little used, but they're there.