Not good:

UP Engineer Charged With Being On Drugs While Driving HAZMAT-Loaded Train

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

 

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

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.

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Train Bell

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Train Bell: Bells are meant to be rung. That goes for church bells as well as train bells. In our case, the church bell was a train bell. Nothing object...

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.

Big Boy, World's Largest Locomotive, Leaves Cheyenne March 29 For Coast-To-Coast Tour

 

Big Boy, World's Largest Locomotive, Leaves Cheyenne March 29 For Coast-To-Coast Tour

Rocky Mountain News, January 13, 1916.

 

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.

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.

Crew Clears 100+ Derailed Freight Cars From Track Near Cheyenne In 18 Hours

 

Crew Clears 100+ Derailed Freight Cars From Track Near Cheyenne In 18 Hours

Towns and Nature: Dubuque, IA: Lost/CGW Depot

Towns and Nature: Dubuque, IA: Lost/CGW Depot: ( Satellite , as is rather typical, the depot's land got used by a highway. It looks like the Milwaukee tracks have also been moved in t...

NTSB, Union Pacific Mum On Hazardous Cargo On Train Near Gas Line Breach

 

NTSB, Union Pacific Mum On Hazardous Cargo On Train Near Gas Line Breach

20-Car Derailment In Albany County Starts Fire, Leaves Packages All Over Tracks

 

20-Car Derailment In Albany County Starts Fire, Leaves Packages All Over Tracks

 

88-Year-Old Cheyenne Railroad Veteran Donates Entire Railroading Collection To UW

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, July 19, 1900. Métro

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, July 19, 1900. Métro: 

Thursday, July 19, 1900. Métro

The first line of the Métro was inaugurated in Paris. 

Towns and Nature: Cheyenne, WY: Big Boy 4004 Static Display and Stor...

Towns and Nature: Cheyenne, WY: Big Boy 4004 Static Display and Stor...: ( Satellite ) Joss Moni posted that is at Holiday Park in Cheyenne, WY correct. been there to eat lunch many times Curt Schnitzer : August 1...

Railroad Bridge over the Platte near Orin Junction.

Railroad Bridge over the Platte near Orin Junction.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, June 12, 1945. Penn Station.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, June 12, 1945. The suicide of the Japanes...: 

Penn Station, June 12, 1945.

 

Freight Containers Topple Off Train North Of Rock River 

Blog Mirror: Casper to support Douglas Rail-Trail study

 

Casper to support Douglas Rail-Trail study