Ok, so this one is for Jamie. Aka, more trains.

Ok, so last time we toured the outside of the Union Pacific rail yard in Cheyenne. This time we will be inside the gates. Well there really aren't any gates, but be went inside either way. The Cheyenne shops are used to service the only remaining steam fleet in the US from a major railroad company. They have 5 mechanics working in Cheyenne and they maintain the show fleet and they are also responsible for snow removal from most of the Rocky Mountain region.

This is a sign you don't see many places.



Inside the shop there was one of the Big Boy locamotives that was receiving boiler maintenance and some chassis repairs before the summer show season.

This Big Boy is actually just a parts vehicle. The frame is cracked, so rather than scrapping the engine, they use it for extra parts to keep the others running.

Inside the Big Boy. You thought a pump panel was busy, this thing is crazy.

Notice the driver.

Notice the sign.

Here is the interior of one of the club cars. This one is from the '20s and the woodwork is amazing. They also have a '50s vintage club car, and the interior looks like it was made in the '50s. Not nearly as impressive.

Here is one of the vintage diesel engines. Much newer than the Big Boys, but still cool.

V-16 3000hp Detroit Diesel powerplant.

Now, here is the Rotary that is used to clear snow in the mountain passes.

Now outside, you can see the roundhouse in the background. Here is a truck from one of the diesel engines that I show above. Checkout the brakepads!

Lots of spare parts laying around the yard. Good thing I work on cars, not trains.

Here is the round table.

These are the tenders that they pull with the Big Boys. They carry 6000 gallons of water plus fuel for the engines. This will let them run for several hundred miles.

So, we were walking towards the roundhouse and I spotted a huge "bench" grinder on a flat car. Or tour host said "that isn't a big grinder, checkout the one inside."

And he was right. You can grind a 2x4 chunk of steel.

That is all for now. We are leaving for OR in about 20 minutes. So we will be on Interstate 80 or 84 when you read this. So, sorry Julie it will be a while before I read your comment.

Talk to everyone soon.

R.J.

This Post is for Mike Ende, everyone else will just have to suffer through it.

Cheyenne, it is a railroad town from the beginning. The major railroad industry has left town at this point, but there is still a large yard in the center of the city as well as the remenants of the railroad shops are still there. And there is still a crew of 6 people that run Union Pacific's Steam Engine shop. The round house that are posted here is just 7 stalls wide now, which used to be a full 270 degrees around the turntable. So that was about 50 stalls. Also the steam engine shop is now only about 6 bays wide, down from about 60 bays.

One of the cool things in town, is that there is a brigde that goes over the railyard so you can have a overhead view of the yard. There are three main E-W tracks that go through the yard and every train that goes through town stop for a crew change. I have eaten at the bar/grill in the old depot and during a dinner, I saw six trains come in and change crews and then take off again. So during the day there are many trains that are headed through here. Fun to watch for DOT and UN numbers.

This is the restored depot that has a museum, the chamber of commerce, a bar/grill, and office space in it now.





Looking west along the main line.



Paula on the overpass with the control tower in the background.



Here is what is left of the roundhouse. I currently stores some of the antique rail cars.

Here is what is left of the steam shops. It used to be 8 times longer.

Ever want to know what a gas pump for a train looks like. This is just a small one for the yard engines. This tank is only 70,500 gallons. The big yards in Omaha and Denver have several 1.5 million gallon tanks.

These is just some cool looking snow removal equipment. It was too far off in the distance to get a good look, so I don't know much else.

Well that is all I have for now. Till next week.

R.J.

Wow what a ride.

So I was laying in bed one night and I started to think about all the places we have been in the last few years, and I decided I had to write down all the places that we have visited in that time. Wow, it was quite a list. I have included the condensed version here.

• April 13, 2006 Last day at Fisher-Price


• April to June 2006 South Wales, NY


• June and July 2006 Travel cross country to Yosemite NP work as a volunteer at Yosemite for a month


• August 2006 Drive to Denver ASAP for pre-employment physicals and training for Antarctica positions. Then drive back to South Wales for two weeks before flying back to Denver on the way to Antarctica


• August 24, 2006 Set foot on Antarctica


• February 15, 2007 Off the Ice back in New Zealand


• February and part of March travel in New Zealand


• March to June 2007 South Wales, NY


• June and July 2007 Travel cross country to Yosemite NP, work as a volunteer at Yosemite for a month


• July 2007 also a two week stint in Salt Lake City, UT for Aircraft Rescue Firefighting School


• August 2007 Travel from CA to NY via SD


• September 2007 South Wales, NY


• October 1, 2007 return to McMurdo Station, Antarctica


• March 2008 travel in New Zealand


• March to May 2008 West Falls, NY


• June 2008 Jonesborough, TN


• June and July 2008 Travel cross country to Yosemite NP, work as a volunteer at Yosemite for a month. Visit Grand Canyon, Vegas along the way


• August 2008 visit friends in San Francisco


• August to October 2008 Fort Bragg, CA camp hosts at Russian Gulch SP


• October 2008 travel to Lassen NVP, CA for a week stay


• October to November 2008 back to Yosemite NP, to volunteer for two weeks


• November to December 2009 spend a month in West Falls, NY


• December 2008 to January 2009 Jonesborough, TN


• January to March 2009 stay in Cheyenne, WY

It is crazy the length of the list. Well, now you are up to speed as to where we have been lately. We are currently residing in an apartment just a few blocks from downtown Cheyenne, WY. Downtown isn’t too big here, so we are basically next to everything. We walk past the state capital building everyday. Plus all of the county, state and federal buildings as well. That plus the rail yard is 85% of what downtown Cheyenne is. It is actually the first time that I have lived in an urban setting (unless you count McMurdo, which is all of the noise of an urban area with none of the benefits) and this is just about the perfect sized city for me. There is just about everything you need from a city, just smaller, kind of like a light city.

Here are some photos of the apartment. It is basically a scaled up version of the RV. It has two rooms, the bathroom and the living/dining/bed/kitchen/front hall room. Very cozy indeed.

We are actually close to wrapping up or stay in Cheyenne. We can’t stand all of this sunny warm weather here, so we are headed west to the coast. We will be going to Bandon, OR on April 1st. Here we will be volunteering with the Oregon State Fish and Wildlife at the Bandon fish hatchery. I really have no idea what exactly we will be doing at a fish hatchery, but I agreed to do it because I can then pick on Brian Greeson about working at a fish hatchery as much as I want. Bandon, for those of you who don’t know your Oregon geography, is about 80 miles north of the California border and it is right on the Pacific coast. Our new digs will be about a mile and a half west of town and the coast. So we won’t be right on the ocean like we were in Russian Gulch last year, but we will be very close.

That’s all for now. Time to go work on my model cars that have occupied my time lately. Till next week.

R.J.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Well last week we had to take Dave back to Denver to fly back to the winter wonderland called Buffalo. Rather than driving straight down I-25 90 miles to the airport, we decided to dust off the RV and head to the mountains. And then Dave can experience what it is like to sleep at Wal-Mart. While I am talking about sleeping at Wal-Mart I would like to suggest to everyone that if you haven’t slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot before, you should try it. They allow RV’s to park in their lots and stay there overnight for free, assuming that some people will come inside and buy some supplies while they are there. So, if you haven’t done it yet, don’t even bother with the RV, just drive over to Wal-Mart tonight and sleep in your car. It is a fun deal. And don’t bother to go home and shower, go for the whole deal and shower up in the bathroom under the low flow faucets.

So, we left on Tuesday morning headed down I-25 and then hung a right and trucked up towards Estes Park. Along the way in one of the slot canyons and conveniently right at a pull off spot, I spotted a Big Horn Sheep down by the river getting a drink. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good close up shot of him, but you get the idea. He actually didn’t have large horns either. They were there, but not very large.

Did I mention that it was 55 degrees in the middle of February? Very nice weather. So while we were in Rocky Mountain National Park we went for a good hike. Our destination was Cub Lake which is around 8500’ of elevation. We hiked for about 6 ½ miles and about 500’ of elevation. Not a bad little afternoon hike.
Where we were at was on the east side of the mountains and the weather towards the east was beautiful and clear and the weather up to the west in the higher mountains was looking very stormy which was interesting to watch. You will see the difference in the photos from the east to the west by the sky.

The flat white area that you see in the 5th and 6th photos is Cub Lake. It is completely frozen over. And when we went over the shoulder above the lake we were walking on a few feet of snow. The fortunate part was that it had been very warm for a few days and several people had snow shoed the trail before us. So the heat helped pack the snow nicely so we didn’t need snow shoes. We broke through from time to time, but not bad at all. Why listen to the ranger when he says “Oh, you will definitely need snow shoes for that trail.”

So the next morning after sleeping at Wal-Mart we went to a local park outside of Denver in some none descript town. And I didn’t pay any attention to the name of the park that we went to. But I thought you might like to see the Bubonic Plague carrying Prairie Dogs. They were fun to watch as long as you don’t get bitten by them. They have another disease but that one you get only if you inhale their droppings. Again, I didn’t pay allot of attention to what that one was. How many people here knew all of the diseases that Prairie Dogs carry and how they are transmitted? There is no limit to what I don’t know but Paula does.

That is it for now. But I have lots of material, so watch for more coming soon. I am planning to get back into the blog writing routine again.

R.J.