Nostalgia & History > UP Cheyenne Mystery Building

Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, Dean Gray walked along the Central Avenue viaduct in Cheyenne, shooting whatever he could see. He took photos of lots of grand old miscellaneous equipment, and a couple of the roundhouse itself.

1) Can anyone identify this building?

2) Looking west at the back of the roundhouse.

3) Looking east.

Don Strack

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I suspect that it is part of the old Roundhouse or possibly the old Boiler House, Bob Darwin's book on Cheyenne may have some photos of it. I'll have to check mine.

Malcolm
New Zealand

I think it's where Obama's records are hidden.
Is Darwin still around? He's the one who got me started superdetailing and scratchbuilding brass with his articles in MR way back when. Excellent work, but I don't think he pleased the folks at Klambake because they never continued his articles.

Oooo, Ooooo, I know teacher!

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Shots 1&2 are UP's Area 51 Hangers!

What's the really obvious white pipe? Steam? Air? Fuel oil?

Bob3985 Wrote:
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> Oooo, Ooooo, I know teacher!

Can you please tell me. It's an honest question. I really don't know.

Don Strack

Hello Don,

A diagram I'm looking at from 1970 shows that the older building in the foreground of photo 1 with the arched doors is the "car shop". Behind it, the newer, taller building with the white window frames is the "wheel shop".

Also, it's not shown on the map but I believe the area to the left in the 3rd photo was the Stores Dept. site; perhaps Herr Krieger can confirm or correct that for us.

Take care,

Mark



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/25/14 06:25 by mamfahr.

Thanks for the honest answer as this site is getting some real winners on it that have nothing to do but put smart comments on here for honest questions.

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty there are at least three, and possibly four, buildings in that first picture.

There is the foreground building that looks like a brewery. Behind it is a taller wooden building that might have been a car house or the like. The upper windows are too clean to indicate that they had fires in there, so it wan't a foundry or the like. In the background is the new building partially shown in the second picture also.

Just to the left of the old wooden building behind the foreground building, there appears to be the end of yet another building of some sort.

Tin Shop is a new one for me. What went on in there?

Here it is Don,
In the first photo the front building was the Tank shop where they worked on the tenders and some caboose work. The rear building was the Coach shop. When I went to work in Cheyenne the front building was gone and the transfer table between the shops was filled in. The back building became the Store department building with a sorter line in it too.

The second photo is the Northeast side of the Passenger section of the roundhouse facing toward the depot. The tracks behind it was the old yard (original freight tracks). The track going crossways on the bottom if the photo was the "Omaha" track which came off the turntable and went out to the mainline tracks to change out power on passenger trains and other mainline trains.

The bottom photo is the store department and car repair facility north of the coach shop and other buildings. When I started there in 1976 several of these tracks were gone and the ones left were the store department tracks. The car repair facility was moved over next to the freight yard.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

I don't know about the building, but the pictures were taken in 1966 or later. In picture 2 there is a VW Type 3 Fastback shown next to the building; these were not available in the US until 1966.