Cheyenne railfan and sculptor Carey Moose Hosterman wasn’t planning to see a rocket train.
He was just driving home from Home Depot with a bag of sculpting tools last week when a strange-looking locomotive rolled out of Cheyenne’s historic depot onto the main line.
He wasn’t sure at the time exactly what he was seeing, but he didn’t hesitate to hit his blinker and pull over to watch it go by.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that is a really cool-looking car or engine on that train there,’” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s got an American flag on it and it looks really different.”
Only later would he learn that No. 4547 was passing through Wyoming on June 2 on its first mission hauling the final solid rocket booster segments for NASA’s Artemis III rocket to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In late 2027, four members of the crew for Artemis III will launch aboard an Orion spacecraft.
It's a demonstration flight in a low Earth orbit that will test rendezvous and docking operations between Orion and test versions of the Human Landing System being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX.
The Artemis IV will be the first crewed lunar landing mission of the Artemis program, scheduled for 2028.
Hosterman has spent years watching all kinds of trains roll through Cheyenne.
He’s seen trains with tanks and armor, and wind turbine blades so long they need two flat cars just to make the curves.
A rocket train, though, was a first, and it was rolling through Cheyenne without fanfare or warning.
The lead engine, he would later learn, was Union Pacific No. 4547, a commemorative locomotive that celebrates President Donald Trump, painted with a fluttering American flag all along its length.
Behind it was the equally colorful No. 1616, a red locomotive that honors Abraham Lincoln for signing the Pacific Railway Act in 1862.
Then came the cars that really puzzled Hosterman — a square, yellow car surrounded by rings of white pipes, followed by a chain of white round cars alternating with square yellow ones.
“They were just these weird-looking, covered capsule-looking things,” Hosterman said. “And my wife and I have been so excited with the Big Boy train, we really pay attention to what’s going around on the tracks.
"So we got to talking about that train, too, and wondering what was in it.”
They wouldn’t solve the mystery until the next day, when they saw a news story about segments of Artemis III being delivered to Florida.
That’s when the strange white capsules and square yellow cars suddenly made sense.
“I wish now I would have taken a picture,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “From now on, when the senses are going off, ‘Hey, you know, this is kind of cool. We should snap a picture.’”
First Steps To The Moon
The rocket train carried the final eight of Northrop Grumman’s twin solid rocket-booster motor segments, manufactured in Utah. The parts will be joined to previously delivered segments shipped in April.
The solid rocket boosters will generate 7.2 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, according to Northrop, and will be among the first pieces of hardware assembled on the mobile launch platform.
Artemis III is the third in a series of missions aiming to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
It’s one of several steps along the way to eventually establishing a permanent base on the moon and then sending astronauts to Mars.
Artemis III builds on the success of the prior Artemis II mission in April, which sent four astronauts on a 10-day flyby of the moon.
The overall mission involved testing NASA’s Orion spacecraft for maneuverability, including docking with a lunar lander.
Wyoming manufacturer L&H Industrial in Gillette had a hand in helping build mission-critical hardware for Artemis II.
That included upgrades to the huge crawler transporter that takes rockets to the launching pad, traveling at 1 mph.
It also included flame detector plates, which help to deflect the searing heat caused by 9 million pounds of thrust that comes out of a rocket all at once during launch.
Why Wyoming Sees Unusual Trains
For those who missed Artemis III’s passage through Wyoming, retired railroad man Stan Blake said rocket parts have passed through Wyoming before, and will likely do so again for future Artemis missions.
Wyoming has some advantages when it comes to hauling such things, thanks to its many wide open spaces.
Many times for extra-wide loads, trains will stop at a certain point on the rail line where things are wider, allowing that extra wide load to pass by without delay.
“I’m sure they are very heavy,” Blake said. “Instead of the normal two axles under each end of the railroad car, they might have three, maybe four axles, kind of like when you see a semi hauling something heavy. They have extra sets of axles and tires.”
Military tanks, meanwhile, typically travel in a special car built for heavier loads.
“There are probably also armed guards in a caboose or in the locomotive,” Blake added. “They do that when they haul nuclear waste. Usually, they’ll have a caboose with armed guards.”
Front-Row Seat To History
Cheyenne is an essential hub for the United States, Hosterman said. That has him constantly looking anytime he passes by the depot, to see if something cool is headed through Wyoming.
“That makes Cheyenne unique, because a whole lot of new things are coming through the tracks that you just don’t know what they are,” he said. “Sometimes you get to see some neat rail cars with military stuff on it.”
As a sculptor, Hosterman appreciates the odd forms that sometimes pass by. He also likes some of the artwork painted on the train cars.
“I’m an artist, so I do kind of admire some of the artwork that goes by,” he said. “Some of it is pretty good, actually.”
After seeing a rocket train roll through Cheyenne, it’s one more reason to keep looking at what’s passing through the depot.
You just never know when the next quiet train rolling through town will be another piece of history.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
