Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily editor Justin George

Justin George

David Madison

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

Erin Mills was driving from Casper to Riverton on Friday afternoon when she found herself just behind a devastating multivehicle crash involving a semitruck that killed two people.

She stopped, “thinking I was waiting on the pilot car since they were doing construction,” she wrote in response to a Facebook post about the crash by the 

Wyoming Department of Transportation District 5

. “People started turning around (and) I was about 7 cars behind the wreck.”

Mills said that it appeared that “a huge tanker plowed into what I thought was about 6 cars,” she wrote. “I have never seen such a terrible accident. I am praying so hard for all involved and their families.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“I was sick to my stomach all night.”"}]

Krista Nethercott, an owner with Grand Teton Funeral Home in Jackson, responded to Mills saying she was even closer to the crash when it happened.

She wrote that she got out of her vehicle and “helped assess people with another guy who was with the construction crew.”

“I am a funeral director, so I’m used to seeing stuff like this, but it was one of the worst accidents I’ve witnessed in person,” Nethercott wrote. “There was a man who ran up who was a pediatric doctor who helped.”

She described a scene where a number of people sprang into action in the aftermath of the crash.

“It was amazing seeing so many people trying to help in a crisis, and we stayed with the survivors until the ambulances finally arrived,” Nethercott wrote. “It took a very long time because the accident was in the middle of nowhere.”

The Wyoming Highway Patrol or WYDOT hasn't yet reported any other details about the crash other than confirming the two fatalities, "numerous injuries" and that the "crash involved a semitruck and a handful of vehicles."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Highway Closed"}]

Just before 2:50 p.m. Friday, the Wyoming Department of Transportation issued an urgent alert: U.S. Highway 20/26 was closed in both directions near Hiland after the catastrophic crash involving a semitruck and multiple passenger vehicles.

For motorists headed between Casper and Riverton on Friday afternoon, the highway suddenly became a parking lot. The highway was closed for nearly 12 hours before it was reopened after 2 a.m. Saturday.

By the time emergency crews arrived on the scene, dark thunderstorm clouds were rolling across central Wyoming, Casper resident Chris Turk told Cowboy State Daily.

Turk said he had been returning from a service call in Riverton when traffic ground to a halt near the crest of a hill only a short distance from the wreck.

"We were following the pilot car through," Turk said. "It happened right on top of that hill. I wasn't far enough over the top to actually see what was going on."

He said law enforcement arrived within minutes, followed shortly by a medical helicopter.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the weather changed."}]

"A crazy storm just came in out of nowhere," Turk said. "The wind was rocking that camper that was in front of me. I honestly didn't think they'd be able to take off."

Instead, the helicopter lifted off after only about 10 minutes on the ground, carrying one of the injured before the storm intensified.

"I was impressed," Turk said about the response. "The pilot knew what he was doing." 

Turk said conflicting reports quickly spread among stranded motorists about how many vehicles were involved.

"The only thing that seemed to have matched up was two people died," he said. 

By Sunday, the Wyoming Highway Patrol had not released an official statement detailing how the collision happened, how many vehicles were involved, or the total number of people injured.

According to the agency’s online fatality crash summary, Friday’s crash represents the 55

 deaths on Wyoming roads so far this year. That’s up from the 51 people killed on state roadways through the same time in 2025. 

As investigators worked to determine exactly what happened, Turk said he was left with the same thought shared by many motorists stranded on the highway that afternoon.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I hope everybody's OK,” he said."}]

Highway 2026 crash Natrona county sign J Stephen Conn via Flckr 6 27 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Witness To Double Fatal Crash Says ‘A Huge Tanker Plowed Into' Construction Scene | Cowboy State Daily</title>

“A huge tanker plowed into what I thought was about 6 cars,” is how one witness described the scene of a devastating double-fatal crash Friday on Highway 20/26 in Natrona County. “It was one of the worst accidents I’ve witnessed in person,” said another.

Witness To Double Fatal Crash Says ‘A Huge Tanker Plowed Into' Construction Scene

Wildlife

Summer is Wyoming’s season for turning over rocks, poking into holes and walking with a perpetual hunch looking for snakes.

Herpalogists, the zoologists who study amphibians and reptiles, are out scouring the landscape and herping, the term used when they are actively flipping rocks and searching stream beds to find Wyoming's elusive snakes in their native habitats.

Sometimes those finds can be unexpected. The fork-tongued reptiles appear on a trail when least expected. 

Recently, a foot-long “nightcrawler” suddenly moved like a snake and slithered into the rocks, its tail disappearing into the shadows. Rather than a shapeshifter, this was an elusive rubber boa, Wyoming’s tiny constrictor snake that can look like a giant worm at first glance.

These rarely seen creatures are more common in the Cowboy State than most people realize.

“I personally don't feel that any of our snakes in Wyoming are terribly rare,” said Matt Rasmussen, vice president of the 

. “However, a lot of them are very rarely encountered because they spend most of their lives either underground or under rocks.”

Rasmussen said most of the secretive snakes in Wyoming only come out at night or when conditions are right — typically warmer, humid times. The rubber boa, for instance, showed up on a day when it had rained and then the temperatures spiked hot.

Rasmussen helped found the new Herpetological Society two years ago to teach others to herp. He said it’s possible to learn more about our state by flipping rocks and seeing what is beneath.

“That's the great thing with Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “There is so little known about the herpetofauna — the frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, etcetera — that live here, and so little known about their distribution.”

He said Wyoming is known for “large charismatic megafauna” such as bison, elk, moose and deer rather than the harder to find animals. As a result, no widespread surveying has been done on smaller non-game species. Wyoming Game and Fish has even asked for community members to help by reporting  rarely seen reptiles and amphibians.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Elusive, Not Rare"}]

While most people think of the more common bullsnake or venomous rattlesnake when discussing reptiles, Rasmussen said Wyoming is home to many harmless snakes.

According to Rasmussen, a few snakes, such as the colorful pale milk snake and rubber boa, could be considered rare in Wyoming. However, he believes they are just harder to find and most people are not aware of them unless they stumble across them.

“There’s the plains black-headed snake, which we really don't know much about their distribution in Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “They're just not studied and have a limited habitat.”

This tan snake with a black head is small and feeds primarily on centipedes and ant eggs. Rasmussen cautions that when found, rather than kill the strange looking snakes that are harmless, report finding them to Wyoming Game and Fish and leave them in their habitat.

In this way, Rasmussen said, herping can be fun. He encourages people to get into the action.

“There are some other really small fossorial snakes like smooth green snakes, which live along creeks in the mountains and eat caterpillars and spiders,” Rasmussen said. “Then there's the Black Hills red-bellied snake, which is a very small snake that eats slugs, worms and snails primarily.”

People are often surprised that Wyoming is home to such a large variety of snakes. He especially likes to show off a milk snake, which is harmless and eats lizards and even baby rattlesnakes.

“It is a beautiful, almost tropical-looking animal that lives right here,” Rasmussen said. “They are just rarely encountered.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Snake & Frog Society"}]

Rasmussen said the new society is trying to educate the community about these fascinating creatures in the Cowboy State that don't get much attention, such as the skink, a short-legged lizard. 

“We're a group of herpetological enthusiasts who would like to spread the word, educate and do outreach about these animals,” he said.

This outreach includes presentations with live animals, field trips and a conference in November. Wyoming’s reptiles and amphibians remain a mystery, Rasmussen encourages reporting sightings on the app 

“Even if you don't know what it is, post a picture because there are tens of thousands of experts who will identify that animal,” Rasmussen said. “That's really important, especially for our herpetofauna in the state.”

He also pointed out that some Wyoming snakes are on the protected list, including the midget faded rattlesnake. They made the list, according to Rasmussen, because people were capturing them and they became popular in among owners who like to keep small venomous snakes as pets.

Rasmussen said awareness is the best protection for Wyoming’s elusive reptiles and he is excited to prove to residents that we don’t have rare snakes, only secretive ones.

Snakes of Wyoming 6 27 26

<title>Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's bright orange pale milk snake, rubber boa and plains black-headed snake are elusive, but not as rare as most people think — they just like to hide. Most of the state's secretive snakes only come out at night or when conditions are right.

Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily political columnist, Rod Miller.

Rod Miller

Opinion

CSD Columnists

Saturday Night Live writers could have stayed up all night long at Burning Man, eating peyote and howling at the moon, and they wouldn’t have been able to write a sketch as funny as the body cam 

 getting busted for (allegedly) driving drunk. 

Please don’t construe this column as condoning the behavior of a politician who drinks better when he drives, but material like this doesn’t present itself all that often. So, I feel it’s my duty as a responsible satirist to pounce right on it like a ravenous tomcat on a three-legged mouse.

Allemand, of Natrona County's House District 58, is running for re-election as a torch-bearer for the Chemtrail Caucus, and as a self-styled “conservative.”

His re-election platform appears to be “draining the swamp” in Cheyenne one beer at a time, protecting our Second Amendment right to bear arms while sloshed behind the wheel, and fighting the woke mob so a man can get shit-faced when he wants.

I think he’ll lose that race; if so, we should keep him around just for laughs.

Comic talent like Allemand’s is generational. As you watch the video, keep in mind that it was done in one take, with no rehearsal. Unbelievable!

First we see Rep. Allemand pulled over by a Johnson County deputy sheriff. Allemand exits his pickup with a bleary gaze and unsteady gait. He engages in folksy banter with the deputy, speaking with a liquor-thickened tongue while he sways.

The officer asks if he has had anything to drink, and the legislator answers, “two beers.” Allemand does not specify whether those coupla brewskies were li’l ol’12oz Bud Lights or man-sized PBR 40s.

Within a few minutes of the stop, the deputy suspects inebriation and spots a gun on Allemand’s pickup seat, so the legislator is detained and cuffed. Then Allemand explains to the deputy that driving on interstate highways gives him anxiety, and drinking beer helps calm him. It’s a novel excuse, but the officer doesn’t seem to buy it.

Another plank in Allemand’s platform is evidently keeping the motoring public safe from anxious drivers. And he leads by example.

Several minutes follow of Allemand, with slurred speech, pleading his case as if he was on court TV, while the cops secure the scene and help the detainee into the back of a squad car for the trip to the hoosegow.

This has been covered well already. So, I’ll just hit some high points, if you’ll pardon the expression.

On the drive to the jail, Allemand tosses out that he is a legislator. That’s an odd thing to say at that moment, unless he wants to impress upon the deputy that he swings a big stick in Cheyenne. But it’s really comedic genius...a straight line that sets up the jokes later in the act.

During booking, Allemand is asked to surrender his belt - pretty standard jail protocol. He then bragged about his “Honor Wyoming” belt buckle, because it’s one of a very few in existence. Maybe he thought is was some sort of secret talisman, a Chemtrail Caucus get-out-of-jail-free card. Anyhow, I got a chuckle out of that.

Getting a DUI will cost Allemand a few hundred bucks, but getting busted for DUI while wearing an Honor Wyoming belt buckle is priceless!

Later, while being questioned about his health history, Allemand blurted out “I wish an old girl had given me herpes a couple days ago, but she didn’t.”

That made me snort and reach for the popcorn. And the penicillin.

Allemand finished his slapstick routine during his booking photo, when he told the officer that his mugshot would show up on Cowboy State Daily, and suggested that the sheriff’s office could sell the photos for “many dollars.”

That’s pretty funny, because law enforcement shares that stuff with what the Chemtrail Caucus calls the “radical left-wing media” in Wyoming free of charge. So it made me snicker.

Stand up routines may be dead in comedy clubs all over our republic, but all it takes is one drunk legislator to prove that humor is alive and well in the Big Empty.

Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com

Rod miller headshot scaled

<title>Rod Miller: Welcome To The Allemand Show | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Rod Miller writes, "Saturday Night Live writers could have stayed up all night at Burning Man, eating peyote and howling at the moon, and they wouldn’t have written a sketch as funny as the body cam video of Rep. Bill Allemand getting busted for (allegedly) driving drunk."

Rod Miller: Welcome To The Allemand Show

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

The first time Farmstead Cider went after old apples in Jackson Hole, it was just for the flavor. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It soon became about the bears. "}]

Every fall as apples drop and ferment in the backyards and ghost orchards of Jackson Hole, grizzlies and black bears do what comes naturally. They follow their noses straight into trouble — calorie-rich fruits that taste oh-so-good when you’re a bear desperate to fatten up for winter. 

The first harvest, though, was all about the homesick wives, Farmstead Cider’s co-owner Orion Bellorado said. They had grown up on the East Coast, where apple harvests are a big deal. 

“We started harvesting the apples in our neighborhood off of peoples’ trees that were kind of derelict,” he said. “And they were tiny, so we pressed a bunch of juice and made some cider out of it.”

The party was great and word soon got around. 

“Someone from the county found out about it and said, ‘Hey, you should really put in for this community grant to start a business,” Bellorado recalled. “‘Because we’ve really been having issues with bears.’”

That was in 2016, and the business has been going ever since, bottling 5,000 to 7,000 gallons of native-yeast cider a year and selling it across Wyoming as well as other states such as Washington and Montana. 

In the process of climbing into backyards and abandoned orchards, Bellorado stumbled onto a bigger realization. Wyoming is curiously — if quietly — rich in apples across the state.

“They are everywhere,” he said. “I mean, Lander was called Apple Town before it was called Lander. It’s full on part of this interesting tidbit of our culture and our history that’s really been left behind.”

That history is being rediscovered thanks to a project called the Wyoming Apple Project. Through it, researchers have been cataloguing a hidden network of heritage and volunteer trees that have somehow survived a century or so of drought and neglect. Researchers say these hardy survivors might point the way to a new kind of apple economy in one of the harshest fruit-growing climates in America.

You wouldn’t know it from today’s landscape of hay bales and cattle, but Wyoming was once thick with apples. Homesteaders brought apple seeds to plant in their new homes, carving out orchards that were just as essential as a root cellar to their survival.

Apples meant sauce, butter, cider, vinegar and livestock feed. They were essential calories, but also comfort — the kind that could be stored up through a long, hard winter.

By the early 1900s, experimental orchards and private growers had tested at least 218 named apple cultivars across Wyoming, including 11 that were Wyoming-bred. 

Among the most ambitious of the early apple pioneers was an experimental fruit farm in Lander, which trialed 175 different cultivars under superintendent John Steinbrecht, who also developed 10 of the 11 Wyoming-bred cultivars. 

Not far away from Steinbrecht was Lander orchardist Ed Young, who planted a prodigious 3,000-some apple trees in 1882 — an act of faith in a place better known for blizzards than fruit blossoms.

At the time, Wyoming was held up as a national example of what’s possible on the frontier. 

“A lot of those early settlers, such as Ed Young, and their success in growing apples was used in news articles back east, to bring hope to people thinking about moving West,” University of Wyoming graduate and plant physiologist Jonathan Magby told Cowboy State Daily. “It helped show them that you can successfully inhabit this remote location of the United States.”

Wyoming’s apples at that time came from everywhere — Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Canada and even Russia. Several nurseries were involved in seeing which varieties could stand up to Wyoming’s brutal mix of cold, drought and wind, including 

At one point, at least 70 out-of-state nurseries and 20 in-state nurseries across 11 Wyoming cities were selling apple stock to Wyoming growers.

Then, slowly, the state forgot about its apples.

Wyoming’s agricultural identity shifted solidly toward cattle and general row crops. Many orchards were abandoned. Irrigation ditches shifted. Families moved away or sold off land.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Winters kept coming. "}]

And the apple trees that had been left behind continued growing. They became part of an unintended Darwinist experiment — one where only the fittest would survive. 

What’s left of the apple trees that once dotted Wyoming are now the toughest of the tough. Trees too full of Wyoming grit to give up and die.

Among the most interesting is a gnarled apple tree in Lander. Its limbs curl up to the sun like an insect on its back, and its trunk is so hollowed out, one wouldn’t be surprised to find a hobbit — or some other creature of legend — sleeping inside.

Somehow, though, this ancient tree is still alive, still leafing out, still stubbornly insisting on producing apples, despite a century or so in a place that routinely tries to freeze them to death.

Wyoming is not a state known for hardy trees. It is, after all, among the coldest and driest of states in the Lower 48. And apple trees aren’t known for being especially long-lived, either. Most never see a 100th birthday.

That makes this particular apple tree special. It’s passed a 100-year stress test, one where Wyoming wind and drought are separating the true pioneers from the pretenders.

To Magby, the Lander tree is far more than a curiosity. It’s a symbol of what Wyoming apples once were, as well as what they could be again. 

These survivors could help develop ever more hardy Wyoming stock, making apples a potential new and viable agricultural commodity. Because of that, the tree’s tissue was pulled and grafted onto new stock, so it can keep growing for another 100 years.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like A CSI Detective"}]

Magby has been searching out all the old heritage apple trees of Wyoming using DNA finger-printing techniques more often associated with crime shows like CSI. 

So far he’s sampled 510 trees at 91 locations in 19 cities, from Lander and Sheridan to Buffalo and Casper, to figure out which trees match known cultivars and which might be lost or forgotten varieties. So far he’s found more than 150 unique genetic fingerprints that don’t match anything in old reference collections. 

Some of those varieties show up in multiple towns, suggesting they are long-lost cultivars that no longer exist anywhere else. hey are a living link to an era when Wyoming was serious apple country.

Two varieties that keep showing up, meanwhile, are Wealthy and Haralson, both bred in Minnesota. They are roughly one-third of all the identified surviving trees in his data set.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Charming History"}]

Magby doesn’t see Wyoming apples as a charming historical footnote. He believes these survivors are pointing the way to a viable agricultural commodity for the state, one that could lead to more products that are made in Wyoming, such as Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole. Making products in Wyoming — referred to as value-added products — is a better bang for the buck. It keeps most of the economic value chain in-state.

Apple cider production makes a lot of sense in Wyoming, alongside the growing microbrewery scene, Magby said. People also just enjoy fresh produce that’s been grown in Wyoming, whether that’s an apple or other fruits.

“We take pride in anything that’s been produced in Wyoming,” Magby said. “So I’d love to see someone take a strong stance of producing and backing development of cultivars and revamping testing of grape and pear varieties and other small fruits, just to provide that diversity, not just in fresh food products, but also diversity of economies.”

Bellorado is already living that future at Farmstead Cider, thanks to bear-safety grants that helped launch a business to haul apples out of backyards and ghost orchards. 

Now, instead of attracting trouble, those apples are a useful and delicious product in a growing business. It’s more joy to the human world, all from abandoned, pioneer apple trees.

Apples Ian Mc Gregor co owner of Farmstead Cider Courtesy Photo 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming was once thick with apples. In fact, it was a top apple producer. Now those forgotten apple trees are being rediscovered by small cider houses. "They're everywhere," said one cider house owner. "Lander was called Apple Town before Lander."

Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing

Wyoming Life

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.”

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.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"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.

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.

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.

Installation began Saturday on Cheyenne’s new 15th Street Railcar Experience, a $5 million downtown project aimed at celebrating the city’s railroad roots. A Union Pacific caboose and two Pullman cars have been restored for the destination.

CSD Staff

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