WaltersRail

As of 2020, fewer people live in Wyoming (576,851) than in Oklahoma City (681,054), because most of Wyoming is more than a mile above sea level, receives little rain, is bitterly cold in winter and is criss-crossed with ridges that don't support much life beyond mountain goats. Despite the lack of people, or maybe because of it, Wyoming is spectacular. I love my home state of Oklahoma, which has some wonderful locations for railroad photography (see https://www.waltersrail.com/2021/02/home-sweet-oklahoma.html), but Oklahoma does not remotely compare to what may be the most beautiful state in America. Yellowstone? Grand Tetons? Wow!

In the 19th century, the first transcontinental railroad (Union Pacific) crossed southern Wyoming, surmounting two difficult grades: (1) Sherman Hill across the Laramie Mountains in far southeastern Wyoming, and (2) Aspen and Altamont Tunnels beneath the Overthrust Belt in the far southwest. In between, traffic faced the challenging climb of Hanna Hill. Further west, westbound trains struggled on the steep grade out of the canyon of the Green River at Peru Hill.

In the 20th century, the Powder River Basin exploded with railroad traffic as the United States shifted power production from dirty, high-sulphur coal of the eastern United States to the clean, low-sulphur coal that is Wyoming's speciality. Included in that explosion was the construction of a new Chicago and Northwestern / Union Pacific line across Nebraska and Wyoming -- the first and still most recent major railroad project since Southern Pacific's Palmdale Cut-off in the 1960's and Santa Fe's Crookton Cut-off in the 1950's.

We will first examine Union Pacific's Overland Route, then turn our attention to the Power River Basin.

1. The Overland Route

A. Sherman Hill

Union Pacific Traffic at Sherman Hill

The Rocky Mountains were the Union Pacific's first major climb west of Omaha. Locating engineers explored virtually all of Colorado and Wyoming, seeking a route accessible to 19th century steam locomotives, which though immensely powerful still could not pull heavy loads up grades more than about one percent. Two percent grades were theoretically possible but required multiple engines and short consists. The locating engineers were looking for a route limited to 0.8 percent.

For many months, the explorers despaired. Nothing in Colorado was enticing. In fact, Colorado appeared to be a land impenetrable by train. (David Moffat would prove otherwise in the early 20th century, but only at a cost that bankrupted him.)

Grenville Dodge, a Union Army general who served with Grant, was in charge of the survey party. Scouting southern Wyoming, his team happened upon Sioux who had been raiding Union Pacific construction crews in a doomed attempt to protect their home.

Discretion prevailing, Dodge and crew began retreating from the mountains to the plains below and accidentally discovered a unique landform christened the "Gangplank" by geologists -- a relatively smooth descent out of the mountains, like a wheel chair ramp, mostly unmarked by erosion, an almost perfect location for a railroad.

Still, the Gangplank was not an easy climb. Topping out over 8,000 feet, the summit was subject to heavy winter snows. Plus, both east and westbound grades exceeded one percent. It was, however, by far the best route available, and the railroad named the location Sherman Hill after Union General W.T. ("War is Hell") Sherman.

Manifest on the third track constructed by Union Pacific to lessen the westbound grade.

Though Sherman Hill is semi-arid, constant winds can pile snow drifts remarkably high, as evidenced by the snow fences in the foreground.

Hottest train on the line. Through Sherman Hill is studded here and there with rock outcroppings, for the most part the land is treeless and undulating. Compared to other railroad crossings of the Rocky Mountains -- the Tunnel District west of Denver, for example -- Sherman Hill is tame, as though the forces shaping our planet created a welcome mat for the first transcontinental railroad.

On the west side of Sherman Hill, an eastbound manifest begins the climb to the top.

On the west side of the hill.

Approaching the summit.

B. Laramie Valley

All mountain ranges are punctuated by bucolic valleys hospitable to people, animals, farming and ranching. The mountains rise among the valleys like folds in a pleated shirt. On the western side of Sherman Hill, the Laramie Valley unrolls in quiet solitude, and the Union Pacific's locating engineers chose to follow this valley north to avoid Elk Mountain.

Laramie, Wyoming (population approximately 31,000) is home to the university of Wyoming (elevation approximately 7,200 feet), with an average growing season of 100 days. I write this on April 30, 2026. The National Weather Service predicts that tonight's low temperature will be 27 degrees Fahrenheit. The last freeze will occur in late May. The next freeze will occur in September. I have been told my local residents that Laramie has seen snow in every month.

The Union Pacific runs northwest out of Laramie through the valley to Rock River, a tiny community that once produced oil, but the flow subsided years ago, and today the town is home to about 200 souls who mostly grow hay and raise cattle in a climate barely hospitable to either.

Union Pacific tracks and the highway parallel each other from Laramie to Rock River.

Westbound UP mixed freight in the Laramie Valley.

Dusk in the valley.

Eastbound manifest leaving Rock River, Wyoming.

Westbound approaching Rock River.

Another.

Westbound (compass northwest). Across the valley are the mountains that the Union Pacific avoided by detouring north.

C. Hanna

Hanna, Wyoming, is the seat of a county (Carbon) named after the coal mines that once latticed the countryside with tunnels. Imagine moles as large as freight trains burrowing beneath the surface, and Hanna will soon rise through the mind's mist. The town is built on top of one of those mines.

Originally constructed to provide coal for the Union Pacific, Hanna suffered two twentieth century traumas that left it today (May 2026) with only a few hundred lonely residents, all either too old, too stubborn or too poor to move. First, the Union Pacific converted its motive power to diesel-electric, sending its steam locomotives to oblivion, along with the coal that powered them. Second, the coal mines (which continued to supply a few power plants) all played out, with the remaining fuel too expensive to extract.

If you drive through town in the twenty-first century, you will note the decrepit remains of a once thriving community. Multiple downtown store fronts that onced housed clothing, drug and furniture emporia are now vacant, their windows cracked and streaked with dust. Some buildings appear to have major leaks in the roofs; you can peer through the cracked glass at inches of water standing on warped linoleum.

Other than yourself, not one soul walks the sidewalk; not one automobile passes in the cracked concrete street. There is a courthouse about the size of a drive-through coffee shop. A sign on the door says that it is open only two days per week.

From Rock River, the Union Pacific tracks run due north about five miles, then turn northwest and travel in relatively flat country about 12 miles to Medicine Bow. To the west, the land has folded upon itself in layers like a bed sheet pushed against a headboard. The folds are not tall but nonetheless pose a significant obstacle to railroad traffic, so the tracks thread their way carefully between the folds all the way to Hanna.

In the image above, the tracks and U.S. 30 follow each other closely to a point about five miles east of Hana, where the tracks turn due west through a crease in the folds, while the highway continues southwest, climbing one hill after another.

To the south, Interstate 80 curves north around Elk Mountain through country far too arduous for a railroad.

Westbound manifest approaching Medicine Bow.

On the flatlands northwest of Rock River.

Approaching Hanna, with Elk Mountain in the background.

An Amtrak reroute (due to track work in Gore Canyon).

Westbound at Hanna. The extra tracks were once used for coal trains.

D. Hanna Hill

West of Hanna the folded land rises abruptly -- about 200 feet in four miles -- a one percent grade that slows westbound intermodals to a jog, others to a crawl. The eastbound side is half as steep -- 0.5 percent from Walcott to the top in twelve miles. The country is deserted, without house or barn or animal or tree or water. Standing at the top of the hill you feel like an astronaut on the moon.

Or perhaps a better analogy is a pioneer at the top of Donner Summit, which at 7,000 feet is three feet lower than the top of Hanna Hill (7003). How about Soldier Summit (7,400)? Or Mullan Pass? At 5,900 feet, it is over 1,000 feet lower than the top of Hanna Hill. Tehachapi? 3,700 feet? Are you kidding?

The bulk of Wyoming outside the mountains, in what we would call rolling hills and valleys, is as high or higher than many (though not all) of the famous Western mountain railroad summits. Marias Pass? 5,200 feet. Cascade Tunnel? 2,800. Tennessee Pass at over 10,000 feet was the grandaddy of them all, but the last train ran in the 20th century when I was in my mid-forties. (As I write, I'm 75.)

Wyoming has been subject over hundreds of millions of years to tectonic forces that have pushed even its lowest elevations well above the surrounding terrain. Hanna sits in the middle of a basin bounded on the north by the Shirely and Seminole mountains, east by Simpson Ridge, south by the Medicine Bow Mountains and west by the Rawlins Uplift. As the mountains grew around it, the middle actually sank in relation to the mountains, though the entire area was pushing skyward, the deepest structural basin in North America, rock bent in a giant "U," with the mountains at the top of each end and the basin at the low point in the middle.

Because of the extreme upward thrust of the tectonic forces, the basin itself is not flat, but layered with ridges. Hanna Hill is one.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-showing-the-Hanna-Laramie-and-Shirley-Basins-Wyoming-including-major-structural_fig1_284185996

As the above map shows, the Union Pacific runs north out of Laramie to avoid the Medicine Bow Mountains, then turns northwest into the Hanna Basin, following the path of least resistance like a river.

Stacks meeting grain at the eastern bottom of the hill.

Westbound manifest attacking Hanna Hill.

Pusher on westbound grain approaching summit.

Eastbound crossing the summit.

Westbound climbing to the summit.

Eastbound down the hill.

Mid-trains approaching summit.

E. Wolcott

West of the Hanna Hill summit, the Union Pacific rolls downgrade across the edge of the folded landscape, then enters the narrow confines of St. Mary's Creek, which the railroad follows to Wolcott, once a small stop on the railroad, now just a few abandoned structures and cattle pens.

U.S. 30 (the "Lincoln Highway") stays in the highlands, carving through Coyote Canyon before descending to about a mile south of Wolcott where (though not shown above) it ties into and becomes part of I-80 West.

A small cabin sits on a small hill south of Wolcott. In my mind it looks dilapidated, threadbare, small, not at all insulated against the incredible winter, but my mind is not always accurate, and in any event it has been several years since I saw the place. A truck is parked beside an ancient refrigerator lying on its back with the door open. The truck is as rundown as the cabin. A Union Pacific freight roars through about every 30 minutes. If you die here, I suppose that someone from the interstate might eventually find you.

If my descriptions of Wolcott and of Wyoming in general sound relentlessly negative, that is not my intent. The state is fantastically beautiful. But most of it is also fantastically lonely, deserted and silent. You can hear a Union Pacific freight for miles before it arrives. So the beauty is tempered by solitude, which makes the place special.

A westbound manifest has come down from the Hanna Hill summit and is preparing to enter the valley of St. Mary's Creek.

An eastbound manifest rolls through Wolcott, Wyoming.

Westbound autos in the valley of St. Mary's Creek.

Westbound trailers beneath St. Mary's Hill.

Eastbound grain beneath Elk Mountain.

One entering and one leaving the valley of St. Mary's Creek. The smoking units are climbing eastbound out of the valley toward the summit of Hanna Hill, while the five westbound units are rolling dowgrade in dynamics.

F. Green River

The headwaters of the Green River are located in Wyoming's Wind River Range. The waters flow south into Utah (with a short, 40 miles diversion into far northwestern Colorado) 730 miles and join the Colorado River at Canyonlands National Park. Along with the Colorado, the Green River has carved one amazing canyon after another across the Colorado Plateau.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_%28Colorado_River_tributary%29

Union Pacific's Overland Route crosses the Green River in one of those canyons. To the east, the tracks and I-80 follow Bitter Creek from Point of Rocks in a wide valley. As the Green River nears, the valley walls close tighter like a vice, and soon you are traveling through a narrow canyon with high, cathedral-like vertical walls composed in lower reaches of oil shale, with sandstone above. The sandstone's resistance to erosion has created the vertical colonnades surrounding the tracks and eponymously named community of about 12,000, making it the 7th largest town in Wyoming. Union Pacific is the major employer, with a significant classification yard and division point.

From the railroad's perspective, all problems lie west of town, where there is no water course to follow. The only route to Utah and beyond requires climbing the cliffs out of the canyon, a spectacular grade called Peru Hill.

Westbound trains climb approximately 300 feet in about 3.8 miles, a 1.5 percent grade that taxes everything Union Pacific offers. When your author was last in Green River, Amtrak was rerouting the California Zephyr on the Overland Route because of forest fires in Colorado. Even the passenger trains struggled up the hill.

An eastbound manifest rolls through the canyon at Green River, Wyoming.

Downgrade stacks passing a westbound manifest on Peru Hill. In the background you can see the edges of the canyon that the railroad has climbed out of.

Westbound trailers in Green River Canyon.

Eastbound descending into the canyon.

Westbound autos approaching the top of the hill.

Coal descending.

Amtrak reroute climbing.

G. Overthrust Belt

Far western Wyoming is fenced from north to south by mountains running from Alaska to Mexico called the Cordilleran Thrust Belt. The currently accepted theory is that a tectonic plate under the Pacific Ocean moved westward over millions of years, smashing into North America, causing the ground to rise up and over a more stable land mass to the east. The thrust belt is called "thin skinned" because it did not raise so-called "basement rocks" from deep within the surface. Other mountain building episodes did push up rocks from deep within the earth's crust and are called "thick skinned," such as the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Canada.

In Wyoming, these thin skinned mountains are commonly called the Overthrust Belt.

From the east the UP line runs from northeast to southwest. The grade begins approximately where the tracks run underneath I-80. From there to either Aspen or Altamont Tunnels, trains climb about 800 feet in about nine miles -- a 1.6 percent grade. The slope on the west side is comparable.

The Union Pacific line under the Overthrust Belt was originally single track, and Aspen Tunnel was constructed first. As traffic grew, the railroad added a second track, requiring the construction of Altamont Tunnel to the north.

The mouths of both tunnels are on private property and difficult to approach. Your author has taken an image of a westbound entering Altamont Tunnel (shown below) but has not attempted to engage the other tunnel mouths or the security cameras that guard them.

Westbound trailers have exited Aspen Tunnel.

Eastbound stacks entering Altamont Tunnel.

The train in the foreground is approaching Altamont Tunnel. Behind it, eastbound stacks have exited Aspen Tunnel.

Pushers on eastbound manifest approaching Altamont Tunnel.

Stacks climbing to Altamont Tunnel. The tracks in the foreground lead to Aspen Tunnel.

Stacks approaching Aspen Tunnel.

2. The UP/C&NW Entry into the Powder River Basin.

When the United States converted to low sulphur, clean-burning coal, Wyoming's Powder River Basin became the epicenter of a railroad earthquake. With lightly used branch lines running north and south of the coal fields, Burlington Northern was positioned to extract as much coal as a hungry nation could devour, provided that it could find financing to upgrade its track to handle heavy coal trains -- which it did.

The Chicago and Northwestern also operated a branch line south of the coal fields, called the "Cowboy Line," that dead-ended at the base of the Wind River Mountains (the result of a failed plan to reach the Pacific) and saw one train per week in each direction. The decrepit track could barely support 10 mph running, and each train crew carried with it equipment to repair damaged rail.

After intense and hostile litigation and negotiation, UP agreed to upgrade 49 miles of its own branch line to Joyce, Nebraska, and provide $60 million in short-term financing to the Northwestern. In return, the Northwestern (with the mighty Union Pacific as its partner) sought and ultimately obtained permanent financing to construct a new 56 mile line from Joyce north to the Cowboy Line, rebuild that decrepit track 45 miles west to Shawnee, Wyoming, construct another six-miles off the Cowboy Line to join the BN's new coal line at Shawnee Junction, and pay to BN one-half the construction costs of that new BN line.

The result was a modern single-track railroad that quickly saw coal traffic rise to a level requiring construction of a second track. As of the date of this article (May 2026), coal traffic has decreased but is still heavy enough to keep Union Pacific (which swallowed the C&NW years ago) busy and lucrative.

Two C&NW coal trains meet on the upgraded portion of the Cowboy Line near Lusk, Wyoming. At the time of this image (1987), the line was single track with passing sidings. It was subsequently upgraded to double track. The C&NW power is shiny and new, as is the rail.

After the line was double-tracked, two empty coal drags run side-by-side in far eastern Wyoming on the new line constructed to connect the Union Pacific branch line at Joyce, Nebraska, to C&NW's Cowboy line.

Coal empties returning to the mines on the new line connecting Joyce, Nebraska, to the Cowboy line.

On the six miles stretch connecting the rebuilt Cowboy Line to Shawnee Junction, coal empties are climbing Myles Hill.

Within sight of Shawnee Junction.

Not all trains on the UP line carry coal. Here is a frac sand train at Shawnee Junction. The tracks in the foreground are BNSF's Orin line.

3. BNSF Orin Line

With dreams of grandeur, the Cheyenne and Northern Railway built north from Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the 1880's, planning to rendezvous with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy at Orin, Wyoming, where the CB&Q would then connect northwest to far southeast Montana, linking with the Northern Pacific, providing a route from Denver to Puget Sound.

The Cheyenne and Northern was eventually absorbed by Union Pacific Railroad subsidiary Union Pacific, Denver and Gulf Railway and later became part of the Colorado and Southern Railway when the Union Pacific went into receivership. The Colorado and Southern was absorbed by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy in 1908, then became part of the gigantic Burlington Northern and today is part of the even more gigantic BNSF.

To reach Orin, the Cheyenne and Northern first had to navigate through treacherous Wendover Canyon. The tracks were extended as far north as Orin by 1900, but the railroad then sat quietly, waiting for the CB&Q to come east from Casper in 1914.

At Wendover Junction (the south end of the canyon) a CB&Q line branching to the southeast provided a link to farms and ranches in western Nebraska and ultimately to Omaha.

When the Powder River Basin exploded with clean coal, the Burlington Northern branch line from Nebraska to Wendover Junction, then north to Orin, became a gateway to coal-fired plants in the East, Midwest and South, if the BN could obtain financing (which it did) to construct a completely new railroad from Orin to the mines. The line was constructed in segments and provided BN with a tsunami of revenue. As discussed above, the UP/CNW eventually joined the BN at Shawnee Junction.

Wendover Junction.

Wendover Canyon.

Sunset north of Wendover Canyon.

Coal empties on the way to Orin Junction.

This train has just emerged from Wendover Canyon.

Coal train at Orin Junction.

Glendo, Wyoming, about halfway between Wendover Junction and Orin Junction.

4. Powder River Basin

Now we enter the Powder River Basin and find a land mostly bereft of trees, with a horizon that stretches as far as you are willing to gaze. The first Europeans to cross this country felt disoriented. Without landmarks or change in terrain, they floated adrift, unmoored. The analogy to the ocean is as old and cliched as the land. A fresher image might be to say that the Powder River Basin is like a huge unrolled carpet beaten down by wind and dust and sun -- not flat but lightly wrinkled, a place where one's assumptions about life are perpetually challenged.

The first question on everyone's mind is: how did such a remote and desolate land produce so much coal? Isn't coal the residue of decayed plant life? Where are the plants?

A very long time ago, hundreds of millions of years, what we now call the Intermountain West was covered with water -- the Western Interior Seaway. We know this because of all the marine skeletons buried in the ground. For example, shark's teeth have been found in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

When the land eventually rose over more millions of years, the sea disappeared. But while the water covered the land, tropical vegetation grew along the shore. Yes, tropical vegetation in Wyoming. The archaeological record contains massive evidence of palm fronds and other tropical plants, as well as the remains of crocodiles.

Over time, the water rose and fell; the shore moved in and out, vegetation grew, died and was covered with silt. The cycle repeated again and again over eons too vast to imagine. The land slowly rose; the water disappeared. Mountains eroded, covering the ground with detritus. The dead plant life was buried deeper and deeper, subjected to more and more pressure and heat. Depending on the amount of pressure and heat, the plant life was transformed into either oil, natural gas or coal. All three are found in the Powder River Basin.

Over more time, the "overburden" above the coal began to erode away. Today, huge seams of coal lie close to the surface to be loosened by explosion, scooped into enormous dump trucks, stored in tall tubular tipples and loaded onto trains for transport to generating plants.

The electricity powering the computer on which I type these words is generated from Powder River coal (Oklahoma Gas and Electric's Red Rock facility).

https://www.cretaceousatlas.org/geology/

https://novilabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Powder-River-Basin-Map.png

Loaded BNSF coal crossing the Powder River Basin.

UP empties.

BNSF coal loads approaching a natural gas plant, with an oil well in foreground and coal tipple in background -- all three forms of hydrocarbon found in the Powder River Basin.

UP coal loads struggle south.

BNSF empties entering the Coal Creek Mine spur.

UP meets BN at the North Antelope Mine.

UP loads passing BNSF empties.

5. West of Gillette

Not only did the CB&Q operate a line south of coal fields, it also supported tracks north of the mines through Gillette, Wyoming, a line that became famous once heavy coal drags began running across Crawford Hill, Nebraska. Prior to the Powder River explosion, this route saw a train or two per day.

The Burlington had envisioned a major transportation corridor from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest and South, but as with the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension, traffic had not materialized. Instead, the tracks sat mostly unused and silent in the dry Wyoming air.

Although almost all coal traffic on this line is routed east of Gillette, some trains venture west through a gnarled landscape sculpted by wind, rain and years. Like most of Wyoming, the country west is empty, with occasional ranch houses dotting the landscape like pimples. You can drive for miles on the gravel road that follows the tracks and not see a soul, although the one time your author did see another vehicle, it was a slow moving pick-up, unpassable in the dust and hills, that prevented chasing the first train to roll through in hours.

Gillette, Wyoming, and some of the coal mines surrounding it.

Eastbound approaching Gillette.

Westbound.

Empties heading back to the mines.

Empties in the siding.

More empties.

Loads headed west.

6. End of the Line

Devil's Tower, Wyoming.

Wyoming is a magnificent state, and its most appealing aspect, for me at least, is its lack of people. Dogs are loyal. So are cats, in their own truculent way. People are not.

Wyoming will stay with you.

To see my other posts, go to waltersrail.com.

To see my photographs on Flickr, go to https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpwalters/.

WaltersRail

Thursday, May 14, 2026

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WYOMING!

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