by Travis Douthi/photos by the author
For nearly a decade of my adolescent years, I had the privilege of living within 125 yards of Union Pacific’s Overland Route in my hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming. In 1976, my father purchased 3039 Homestead Avenue, located east of Cheyenne near the present-day Holly Frontier Refinery. It was a standard three-bedroom home with a single-car garage. The outside of the house was painted in a dark shade of yellow and my father often referred to the street as “Dumpstead,” in a joking manner.
The house had two key selling points for my father – one is that it was near Johnson Junior High School, where he was a guidance counselor. But more importantly was the unobstructed view it afforded us of UP’s Overland Route east to North Platte, Neb. It provided us with a great opportunity to monitor the traffic and document some interesting railroad action. We were not only interested in foreign power, but we had an interest in UP’s steel cabooses. The Class CA-3’s numbered between 25000-25099, along with the CA-4’s 25100-25199, were always coveted and worthy of a chase.
ABOVE: On July 19, 1981, a mixed freight is departing eastbound towards North Platte, Neb., with two Union Pacific SD40-2s, Burlington Northern SD40-2 6842 still wearing Frisco paint and Southern Pacific SD45 8994. This view was taken from the Logan Avenue overpass.
I started photographing trains using a Kodak Instamatic camera with print film. One such early memory was an eastbound manifest passing behind our house with three locomotives. I can only recall that the trailing unit, dead in consist, was U50C 5021. My father and I raced ahead to Archer, Wyo., and I snapped a photo of it on a cloudy late summer afternoon in 1976. It was quite a thrill for a six-year boy, since at the time it was my favorite UP locomotive type that forced my father to push the speedometer limits on his 1978 white Datsun truck. Normally, we could make it to the East Pershing Boulevard overpass at Archer, but sometimes we found ourselves thirty miles east in Burns or Egbert!
Norfolk & Western diesels were frequent visitors to the Magic City of the Plains. On a few rare occasions, I recall seeing a handful of locomotives painted Tuscan Red. N&W painted a total of seven units (SD40-2 6175 and C30-7s 8010, 8076, 8077, 8078, 8079 and 8080) in the experimental Tuscan Red with gold lettering to pull Office Car Special passenger trains, though they often were put to work in regular revenue service. On a sunny August afternoon in 1980, I got my first glimpse of the 8076 pulling a westbound FMC soda-ash hopper train. It slowly rolled by the house and stopped for a red signal east of the Logan Avenue overpass. I remember seeing a few of the other red General Electric locomotives, but I never saw the lone EMD in Tuscan.
ABOVE: An interesting collection of Union Pacific equipment is sitting near the Cheyenne depot on January 2, 1983. A mix of CA-8 (25500-series) and CA-4 (25100-series) steel cabooses, rotary snowplow 900098 wearing silver paint and rail detector car DC-4 bask in the winter sun. The rotary plow was retired in December 1980 and resided in the Cheyenne roundhouse until being moved outside in the summer of 1982. Presently, it is on display in Hanna, Wyo., near the Hanna Town Recreation Center.
Since our house was near the east end of the UP yard, a normal routine for my father and I was to make the short drive to access the UP yard off E. Union Pacific Ave. This was near the Logan Ave. overpass. A paved road clearly marked with “Private Property – No Trespassing – Union Pacific R.R.” sign stood at the entrance. The road headed west, bisecting the sprawling yard for about 1.5 miles and eventually turning into W. Union Pacific Ave. It afforded us the opportunity to acquire some nice photos near the roundhouse and the primary service area for diesel power. The countless times we used the road we were never stopped or told to leave. We would exit the west end of the UP yard at Ames Ave., just before the UP tracks crossed over Crow Creek. As a young kid, I was always fascinated with a large “A” shaped structure at the corner of Ames Ave. and W. Lincolnway. The location had a big sign reading Eagle’s Nest Bar, which was a well-known biker bar.
Union Pacific often used 3000-series SD40 locomotives in switching service. UP switch crews used a track at the east end of the yard to clear switches and make it easier to shuttle cars into the yard tracks. This track was about 1,800 feet long and ended abruptly on a dirt fill near Campstool Road. In late July of 1982, I recall seeing the first of several locomotive mishaps at the end of track, as SD40 3017 failed to stop in time and pushed through the mound of dirt. It looks like it was pretty harmless, but must have been an exciting ride for the crew! You could always count on a couple of minor mishaps like these each year.
ABOVE: Westbound Union Pacific SD40 3065 and two run-through Southern Pacific SD45T-2 Tunnel Motors pull a long train of empty Pacific Fruit Express cars into Cheyenne on their way back to the Golden State on June 4, 1980. On the right, UP SD40 3000 is handling a cut of empty UP gondolas.
Another common sight was Southern Pacific’s scarlet and gray locomotives rolling through Cheyenne. They were usually trailing behind Union Pacific lead units and we saw a wide variety of SP power, including their unique Tunnel Motors.
In the early evenings, I spent a lot of time in the alley behind our backyard fence playing baseball catch with my father. I would keep a sharp eye out for the first glimpse of a westbound headlight leaning into the curve east of the North College Drive overpass. As soon as I saw a headlight, I would throw my baseball glove on the ground, grab my camera and run as fast as my legs would allow. I would head down the short embankment and fly across the former CB&Q roadbed to position myself for a quick photo. Sometimes, my legs weren’t fast enough and getting the shot often depended on whether that head-light belonged to a hot piggyback train or a lower priority and heavier mixed manifest.
Jack Wolff was a valuable source of information and would often relay news to my father and I about interesting movements. We tagged along in Jack’s yellow Ford truck on a late Spring afternoon in The summer of 1984 was a busy time for my father and me. Not only did we take our week-long August Montana trip to record Burlington Northern action (see TRP First Quarter 2020), but we also documented the return of UP’s DDA40X Centennial locomotives. The Big Jacks were back! They had been stored in Yermo, Calif., and were pressed back into action…
