An oral history project on Union Pacific (UP) workers in Wyoming just ended last year. The project gathered everyday workers’ stories from their perspective. A new exhibit, “Life Between the Rails: Highlights and Insights from an Oral History Project,” is up at the American Heritage Center (AHC).
The idea was sparked by Cheyenne historian Jim Ehrenberger, who advocated telling the history of the UP from a different perspective. His collection of nearly 100,000 railroad artifacts is housed at the AHC. Funding from the Union Pacific Historical Foundation made the project a reality.
Since May of 2024, historian and archivist Leslie Waggener and project assistant Tana Libolt have been listening to and recording stories from Wyoming UP employees and employee family members.
“When you think about the title, ‘Life Between The Rails’, what was it like to live that life every day? That’s not a story that you get from a lot of documents,” Waggener said.
They spoke to over 35 people for the project. Four roundtable interviews took place in the major railroad cities of Cheyenne and Laramie. The rest were individual interviews around the state. Interviewees’ stories span from WWII to the 1970s. Libolt said many of them recalled landmark changes in train technology.
“In the seventies, it was crucial that you get your goods to the coast as quickly as possible. That was one way the railroads competed with one another,” Libolt said. “And some of the engineers we talked to really developed their skills driving trains very fast, but very safely.”
Waggener added that these necessary skills changed over time.
“When the computer took over, it was like, ‘What’s the fun in this? What’s the point of me being here?’”
Waggener and Libolt spent a year traveling in Wyoming, collecting interviews. During two roundtable discussions at Cheyenne’s train depot, men and women shared their experiences.
“We interviewed the men first, and they were talking about the technical aspects of running the trains and some of the really scary things that they were having to deal with,” Waggener said. “When it came to talking to the women, it was that camaraderie between women.”
One such woman was Celeste Malloy, who spoke about being pregnant while working for the UP in the 1970s.
“You wear the big baggie bibs, and you can hide it for a while,” Malloy shared. “They kept calling me and telling me, ‘The dispensary says you need to come in for your biannual physical,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not going in for the biannual physical, because the manager had already told the doctors to pull me out of service.’”
Carol Pascal recalled her Aunt Rosemary’s experience working for the UP in Cheyenne during WWII.
“My Aunt Rosemary, when she worked during the war, she prepared some of the meals and so forth for the passenger cars. She would write little notes, like ‘good luck’ and ‘we love you’, and so forth, on the packages,” she said.
Rosemary also faced discrimination.
“At some point, they replaced her with an Anglo lady, and she went to work outside. She said she couldn’t wait for the war to be over because the winters were really hard.”
Waggenner said the oral stories showed different layers of UP history.
“When you think about all the different levels, so there’s labor history, then you dig down deeper, there’s women entering the train service field. What was it like to be someone under documented Hispanic and finally worked your way into train service, what had to happen?” asked Waggener.
Roy Sanchez shared his experience trying to be hired as a brakeman in the 1960s.
“73, that’s when I hired out, but I tried since ‘65. The secretary of the trainmaster in Laramie, he said, ‘I’ll give you a job, but you’re going to be out there pounding spikes with your other people.’”
Sanchez spent nearly a decade pursuing a job with the UP.
“I said, ‘I don’t wanna do that, I wanna be a brakeman, cause you’re hiring brakemen right now.’ It finally happened, on May the 16, that’s when I finally went to work after all those years of trying to get on. They started hiring, and I opened the door for all the Hispanics in Laramie,” said Sanchez.
He worked as a brakeman and a conductor in Laramie from 1973 to 1997.
The exhibit features more audio and visual recordings. Visitors can sit and listen to the stories, as if they were with the speakers. The exhibit is open at the AHC until March 1.
Waggener said that spoken history is uniquely impactful.
“When it comes to oral history, you can see a transcript. But it doesn’t capture the tonality of the person talking about it, and how they’re talking about it, and the emotion. Because that’s what makes it so rich,” said Waggener.
The historians have been traveling around the state sharing their insights and reflections from the project. The next lecture will be at the Cheyenne Depot on February 19.
