CHEYENNE — The most prominent words on the Kenefick green Union Pacific caboose FTSX 812, now being restored for the city's 15th Street Railcar Experience, are also the oddest.
“DO NOT HUMP,” they say, in all capital letters.
Train restoration expert Mike Pannell knew the phrase would raise some eyebrows. He even offered to paint it out.
“They decided to keep it,” Pannell said.
That decision preserved the car’s historic integrity, which made Pannell happy. But he’s also quick to explain what those words actually mean.
“See how it’s lower in the middle there?” he said, pointing to the midsection of the caboose. “So, North Platte has a hump yard, which is a yard with a hump in the middle. They would push boxcars over the hump and let them roll free to guide them into different tracks without using locomotives.”
This caboose, loaded with boxy equipment slung low under its belly, was a bad candidate for that approach.
“You’d have grounded it in the middle,” Pannell said. “So you couldn’t have done that with them.”
A $5 Million Bet On West 15th Street
The caboose is one of three railcars whose exteriors Pannell is restoring for the 15th Street Railcar experience, which is being installed starting Saturday.
The $5 million project is part of a massive downtown revitalization effort that seeks to not only celebrate Cheyenne’s deep railroad roots, but also create a destination that can attract visitors to West 15th Street.
New lighting, updated crosswalks, and streetscape elements, as well as better traffic flow for pedestrians and vehicles, are also part of the project, which was funded in part with a $618,400 Economic Development Administration grant and 6th Penny funds earmarked for downtown projects.
Not everyone has been sold on the railcar experience, however, and the project has stirred some debate.
Questions have centered on whether railcars are the best use of limited downtown space and public tax dollars, as well as concerns about lost parking and the fate of long-running attractions such as the Cheyenne Gunslingers.
Roger Barnes, with the Gunslingers, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday the Gunslingers won’t move right away, but will eventually shift performances to the corner of Thomes and West 15th Street.
Strong Tourism Potential
The seed for the 15th Street Railcar project was planted in 2021, when Visit Cheyenne developed a master plan for Laramie County. One of its pillars was creating a new visitor experience, especially around railroad history.
Former Visit Cheyenne CEO Domenic Bravo, who is now Wyoming Office of Tourism Director, said the idea was simple but powerful.
“The idea was to bring actual rail cars onto 15th Street, so people can see them,” he said. “Because, they can’t really access the rail yard there that Union Pacific manages.”
Visit Cheyenne CEO Jim Walter said he believes the tourism opportunity is strong.
Railfans are particularly dedicated tourists whose niche passions drive them to stay longer, travel farther, and invest heavily in localized experiences and memorabilia.
National data from the Mandala Research Group and the U.S. Cultural & Heritage Tourism Marketing Council finds that heritage tourists like railfans tend to spend on average 60% more than other types of leisure travelers.
Railfans often travel long distances to track down specific locomotives, such as Union Pacific’s Big Boy 4014, or to visit heritage railroad towns like Cheyenne to check out its museums. That Cheyenne has an operating Steam Shop is unique.
The companions of railfans, who are not always train enthusiasts, tend to spread out to other opportunities like shopping, dining or other attractions.
Cheyenne’s Pivotal To Railroad History
Walter has seen firsthand just how much people love trains.
“Every year, we get a large volume of visitors who come to Cheyenne for our railroad history,” he said. “They come for Depot Days and they come at all times of the year to visit the Depot Museum.”
Many times, Walter has found himself talking to visitors at the Depot who are asking him questions about Big Boy, the Steam Shop, and Cheyenne’s railroad history. Some of those are retired railroaders, chasing railroad history across the nation.
“The only reason Cheyenne is where it is, is because of our railroad history,” Walter said. “It wasn’t the most hospitable place to start a civilized settlement. But the railroad needing to cross Sherman Hill … set Cheyenne up to just have this really pivotal and cool role in railroad history.”
Inside Pannell’s Railcar Restoration Shop
Pannell, who is originally from the UK, is among those attracted to Cheyenne because of its railroad history. Now president of the High Plains Railroad Preservation Association, he’s well-known for his train-car restoration projects, which take place on a historic parcel that once housed the 565th Strategic Missile Squadron.
The silo is long enough to fit three train cars on one side and three on the other, with room to walk between. That’s made it the ideal train-restoration workshop for Pannell, who has multiple projects going.
The 15th Street cars have been challenging, he said, and have been a sprint ever since the project began in October.
From Rusted Relics To Railcar Stars
All three cars were in bad shape when they arrived, Pannell said, after sitting in Union Pacific’s Cheyenne railyard for nearly two decades. They’d been battered by wind and were rusting in some places. Many had also been put to secondary uses at some point in their history, degrading their historic integrity.
“Every window on this entire car is brand new,” he said, pointing at the Pullman SP10041 car. “Brand-new frames and everything, because the original frames had been butchered. And they put plexiglass in and added metal around the insides.”
New, rubber roofs have been put on the Pullman cars, and every non-historic vent and hole stripped out.
The caboose was in the worst shape of the three and took the most time to restore. It had once been part of a train “demolition derby,” Pannell explained. It had been used to brake other trains by letting them slam into it.
“It really got hammered horribly,” he said. “It had been smashed in on both edges repeatedly. It was really quite bent. You couldn’t even get into the thing.”
It took Pannell’s welder hundreds of hours to pull out the smashed and bent steel to save the caboose. New ladders and steps, which were crafted to match the originals, were added, ends were rebuilt, and new sections placed.
“We couldn’t paint it and leave it looking beaten up like it was,” Pannell said.
Pannell used authentic colors for each car: Pullman green for SP113 and SP1004, and Kenefick green for the caboose.
The latter has special meaning. The vivid turquoise green was the color scheme envisioned by John C. Kenefick, Union Pacific president from 1971 to 1986, to identify maintenance cars.
“People have said to us, ‘Why is it green',” Pannell said. “It’s a tribute to all the maintenance crews who never get any recognition.”
A recent visit by a retired maintenance crew chief has vindicated that decision, in Pannell’s mind.
“He came out here and got really emotional when he saw the car,” he said.
Coming Home Soon
On Saturday, all three cars will finally come off their “Jenga” towers made of huge railroad ties. Wheels will go back under the cars for their journey to their new home in Cheyenne in the area between the Depot and Bent Avenue.
Pannell expects the move to take at least three days to get each car carefully set in place on tracks that have been installed for the display.
For now, the cars will be largely exterior display pieces. The interiors were already stripped out when they arrived at Pannell’s operation. But Pannell is thinking about the future, and he’d like to see a hobby shop combined with a cafe or coffee shop catering to railroad enthusiasts.
But there would be challenges to that kind of dream, he added. The cars aren’t ADA compliant, and doing so would require cutting into them in ways that would destroy historic integrity.
Even display activity has value, Bravo said.
“Every extra 15 minutes is holding a visitor in our state,” he said. “That turns into ‘Well, now let’s go to the restaurant for lunch or dinner,’ or ‘We need to stay an extra night so we can hit all the museums.’”
An extra 30 minutes or so in the downtown area translates to extra cups of coffee or soda, Walter added, and perhaps a sandwich as well.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
