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

When most people drive the back roads of Wyoming, they see empty prairie, distant fence lines and maybe an occasional wind-bent tree.

Cheyenne railroad enthusiast Michael Pannell has his eye on something else entirely.

He’s looking for traces of long-abandoned railroads and the forgotten structures that once went with them.

His latest fascination is the old Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad line, or CB&Q, that ran between Cheyenne and Sterling, Colorado. Most of the towns along that portion of the CB&Q line are now ghost towns, Pannell told Cowboy State Daily, but that only makes them all the more interesting.

“I’ve always been interested in that railway line, which ran from Cheyenne to Sterling, Colorado,” he said. “It was this obviously rural, slow, quiet little railway line that ran from 1887 to 1974.”

Pannell has been walking stretches of the CB&Q line off and on for 25 years, poking into this or that corner. It makes a nice break from everyday work and gets him outside.

But lately, he’s felt a little more urgency toward the endeavor.

“I’ve seen some landowners clearing a lot of areas and encroaching on the railway and plowing bits in and demolishing stuff,” he said. “It’s just fading away quicker now than it ever has. So it’s kind of urgent to get this stuff done and actually recover what you can and do something with it.”

Can't Resist A Good Boxcar

Pannell already has a number of boxcars he’s working on restoring, including a 113-year-old Union Pacific boxcar, as well as a couple of trains for Cheyenne’s 15th Street Project.

But Pannell’s walkabout along the old CB&Q line has already pinpointed a boxcar he wants to save, and a good boxcar rescue is something he can never quite resist.

This particular boxcar, he believes, would be ideal for a small display near Arcola that he’s envisioning. The display could feature a restored CB&Q boxcar as well as original signage showing how things once were.

Most people drive by this area never even knowing there’s an abandoned railroad around at all, he said. A display would help highlight the hidden history and help keep a Wyoming memory alive.

Walking, rather than driving, is the best way he’s found to catch sight of things that might be significant — like the shed he noticed recently with a strangely curved roof.

“That curve was the first indication that it was something railroad,” Pannell said.

He instantly recognized the telltale shape because of his decades working with old 1800s boxcars. He can spot them from a mile or more away.

“When we went inside, it has this kind of painted bead board inside in railroad colors,” he said.

Learning that the shed is something the owner wants to demolish, Pannell gained permission to look behind that bead board so he could be sure whether it really is an old, repurposed railcar.

“Because I’m so used to railroad construction from the 1800s or whatever, I’m pretty sure what we found so far is part of a boxcar by the way it’s been built,” Pannell said. “And we’ve got permission to take it to pieces and move it, so we’ll find out if it is or isn’t.”

An Ever-Growing Collection

The Arcola boxcar joins an ever-growing collection of historic railcars, buses, wagon carts and other railroad-associated stock that Pannell is working on at his unique restoration workshop, which is an old Atlas missile silo about 30 minutes outside of Cheyenne near Carpenter.

Through his nonprofit, High Plains Railroad Preservation, Pannell has a number of ambitious projects, including the 113-year-old Union Pacific boxcar he rescued from Chalk Bluff Road last year.

Casual passersby might have believed that car was only good for the junk heap, but Pannell saw treasure in the weathered wood and fading paint.

Inside that car, he’s discovered signatures and dates scrawled on the walls, likely left by railroad workers who once used it as an outfit car — that’s a rolling bunkhouse for crews building and maintaining track.

Pannell is also working on cars for Cheyenne’s 15th Street experience, a project that will deploy rehabilitated railcars along a revamped 15th Street corridor, creating a destination that highlights the community’s deep railroad roots.

More Lost Treasures Already Found

Pannell has already identified a good location for the CB&Q boxcar once it’s restored, on property owned by a friend who has also been helping him explore the area.

“It’s just a fun project,” Pannell said. “I’m always interested in history, and it’s always a shame to see it lost or forgotten.”

People living in the area have begun to notice Pannell’s many forays along the CB&Q line, and some of them have brought railroad treasures from out of hiding for his project.

“One of the local landowners had the sign from the depot in Arcola,” Pannell said. “She found that in a barn on her property and saved it.”

Pannell had been looking for that sign for years but figured it had simply been destroyed or put to a use that would forever obscure its true nature.

Then one day, a woman showed up at his train restoration silo with the sign in hand.

“It’s been chopped in half and it’s missing the ‘A’ off the end,” he said. “But it is the absolute original depot sign that was on top of the boxcar depot. And there was only one of those, so this is it. That is a really rare find.”

Pannell will restore the sign so that it looks original, including the missing “A.”

Then he plans to put it at the end of the boxcar he’s working on, creating a display that will look similar to what it once did.

“We also found a milepost along the railroad track, lying down on the bank, and have picked that up as well,” Pannell said. “And I’ve got an original style of crossing sign that they had out here, which we can put back … all that hopefully will make a really good, authentic display.”

Railroads Were Like The Small Towns They Served

In the days of the CB&Q line, things worked much differently for railroads than they do now in the age of regimented, high-speed rail corridors.

“They had a depot in Cheyenne, and then there was a little passenger stop and a campstool, and they were kind of like request stops,” Pannell said. “So you basically stood there and stuck your hand out and the train was stopped for you.”

Arcola also had a depot, as did Grover — the latter being the only CB&Q depot that Pannell knows of that’s still standing. Many of the other stops he wants to explore in southeast Wyoming and northeast Colorado are little more than ghost towns now, some of which are no longer even highlighted on a map.

“A lot of these places are just ghost towns now,” Pannell said. “There’s nothing left there at all — Sligo, Keota, Buckingham, Ramah, Stoneham, Willard, Logan and Sterling.”

One of the things Pannell likes about CB&Q history is how the country railroad once served so many colorful small rural communities in such a personal way.

“It was a lovely railway because the locals would drop off notes to the train crew and then the train crew would go into town in Cheyenne and pick stuff up for them and drop it off on the way back,” Pannell said. “It’s a way of life that just doesn’t exist at all anymore. It’s just incredible, absolutely incredible.”

The intimacy between people and trains is part of what Pannell hopes to capture with his Arcola display — not just steel and timetables, but the everyday errands, favors and friendships that moved along the line with the freight and mail.

They don’t build railroads like that anymore, but when Pannell is finished, the history will have a brand-new life near Arcola — one he hopes will help keep an important Wyoming memory alive.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.