I was born and raised in Wyoming, but went to college in Lincoln, Nebraska. The first week of September I packed a big trunk given to me by a retired conductor for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, and my parents drove me to Casper to board the CB&Q to go as far as Alliance Nebraska. At Alliance, there is a change to another CB&Q train traveling from Billings, Montana, which goes on east to Lincoln. Actually, Alliance owes its present name, adopted in 1888, to the coming of the CB&Q, the fact that it is the junction of two rail lines, and more specifically to the suggestion of H.W. Holdrege, the rail yard superintendent.

When school adjourned for Christmas vacation, I returned to Wyoming the same way I had come, on the train. The main difference in the return trip is that from Lincoln to Casper you start out on the CB&Q to Billings, and change at Alliance, to the CB&Q to Casper.

Darkness had fallen, and there was a fierce snow storm blowing when we pulled into Alliance. The wind was blowing so hard the snow flakes, driven almost horizontally by the blast, cut into open eyes like sand. The wind chill must have been -20 degrees, giving us all a bitter dose of mid-west high plains misery. I got off the Lincoln to Billings train, pulled my collar up and walked the few feet to the station door. The Alliance to Casper train was not loading additional passengers yet, and the waiting room was packed with people, most of them families, many just mothers with their children. Some were headed west like me, others were waiting to get on the train north to Billings. A few hardy souls stood on the platform to get aboard as soon as the train stopped.

It soon became apparent that there was some kind of hold up, so we all squeezed inside the station house to get out of the freezing wind and snow biting into our tortured faces. The room soon filled with cigarette smoke, and after breathing it until my sinuses closed, I found myself moving back toward the door to get out for a breath of fresh air.

A conductor pulled the door open from the outside just as I was about to push it open. As he entered the station I stepped back, while he proceeded to make an announcement. Raising his voice above the din, he declared that there just weren't enough seats in the passenger cars to accommodate the large number of people waiting to get on the Alliance to Casper train, so he was going to board families first, particularly women and children. Fathers and men without families should wait until further notice.

Wanting to know what was going on, I completed my exit to look around outside. In the low visibility, the station lights lit up the darkness just enough for me to watch a lone locomotive, a great steel hulk in the blowing snow, pulling a single boxcar up an adjacent track. Because it was going the wrong direction I quickly lost interest and backed up to the station wall to get out of the wind. I had my collar up and my head down, so I didn't notice the boxcar, now changed directions, being backed up to the passenger train. When it crashed into the last passenger car and coupled, I looked up without the least suspicion that soon I would be inside the boxcar myself.

The door to the car had been left wide open in the railroad yard, and there was a good four or five inches of snow on the floor behind the door opening. A couple of railroad employees carried some portable steps up to the boxcar, then returned to the station house, got snow shovels, and shoveled the snow out of the boxcar. Within fifteen to twenty minutes a truck drove up with a load of steel folding chairs and unloaded them into the boxcar.

"All right you guys, get aboard," announced the conductor. "Its going to be a cold ride for a while, but there is a heater in the car, so it should warm up after we get started."

We reluctantly climbed into the boxcar and took a freezing cold seat on the steel chairs. I got colder the longer the train sat at the station. Then, just before the train departed the station, someone drove a pickup truck alongside our boxcar and tossed in two cases of beer. Cheers rang out as the conductor slammed the sliding steel door shut on the car and we were locked inside.

We had light in the car, and after some constructive manipulations and adjustments at the front of the car, the conductors opened a door from the boxcar into the passenger cars. That meant we had restroom facilities in the passenger cars; but the guys who were drinking most of the beer didn't bother to take advantage of them. The back of the boxcar was just fine.

Despite the draft coming though the poor seal on the door, the car soon reeked with cigarette smoke, and as the beer disappeared the passengers got more festive. Someone pulled out a deck of cards and started dealing to four or five guys around him. Others, gathered in small groups, got acquainted with each other, told stories, or just sat and cursed the weather and the railroad.

Suddenly, the door to the passenger cars flew open, and silhouetted against the brighter light shining through the opening, clouded and diffused by the smoke from the boxcar, emerged a figure reminiscent of a gunfighter from the old west. Only, he turned out to be a fundamentalist preacher. He stood there spread-legged, balancing himself against the rocking of the train. He was dressed in a long black coat and wearing a moderately broad, flat brimmed hat. He had the look of a man on a mission. He stood there, fluidly rocking from side to side, getting the feel of the rougher riding boxcar. In his hand he held a Bible, thrusting it out like a six-shooter--taking in the scene: the smoke, the beer, and the profanity.

Then he pulled the trigger. He fired his verbal volley by reading from I Corinthians 6:9, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Then from the following verse he identified the unrighteous as "revilers" and "drunkards." He damned sinners like those who sat before him to Hell, but at the same time testified that whenever the opportunity presented itself he was called to preach the Gospel of repentance, inviting us all the accept Jesus as our Savior and to avoid the everlasting fire which otherwise awaited us.

A few of the younger men, roughneck types, began heckling him, and having no stomach for the demeaning language hurled his direction, he felt obliged to leave us sinners to our demonic fate while he returned to the warmth and civility of the passenger cars.

The rhythmic rocking of the railroad car eventually put me in a hypnotic trance if not sleep, and time being out of mind, day dawned, and soon, it seemed, the train was pulling into the Casper station. I was one of the few left in the car, because as the train dropped passengers off along the route, most of the men from the boxcar had either gotten off the train or had taken seats in the passenger cars.

My folks were waiting for me, surprised to hear that like a hobo I had spent the night riding in a boxcar, but happy to see me under any condition.

Ten years later, I was visiting a friend in Sheridan, Wyoming. She was married to a man, Dale, who for years had worked for the CB&Q. At dinner, with all the detail and emotion I could muster, I told him the story of my ride from Alliance to Casper in the boxcar. I expected him to laugh and celebrate the spirit of the "still wild west," but he was appalled. The Burlington had taken a terrible risk in transporting us in a car with seats that had no anchors to hold them to the floor should the engineer have had to hit the brakes.

"You could have all been thrown against the front of the car and seriously injured, even killed," he fumed.

"The Burlington could have been liable for millions of dollars."

"If I had been there, I wouldn't have allowed it!"

"Those men ignored railroad policy, broke the rules."

I had never given a thought to the consequences the actions of the railroad workers in Alliance might have had that night in case of an accident.

I don't really remember how the conversation with Dale ended. I probably got serious and agreed with him while we proceeded to eat our meal.

But, I'm glad Dale wasn't there in Alliance that night enforcing the Burlington's policy. It would be a shame for a "policy man" to become an obstacle to such a good story.

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