Tracking the DM&E's big dream: Chapter 5

After driving into Newcastle late on a Monday night, I check into a small downtown hotel and watch the late news before drifting off to sleep.

I am awakened minutes later by a piercing horn. The

The building in which Newcastle, Wyo., Mayor Mike Mills lost his New York Life Insurance office was destroyed by fire in 1998. He is one of many small-town officials along the DM&E route who say the coal train project could infuse much needed tax revenue into their communities.

room vibrates and a train three blocks away thunders down the track so loudly it seems as though it'll crash through the wall. The next day I learn it is one of 60 coal trains, each carrying about 110 cars loaded with 11,000 tons of coal, that rumbles through town every day.

At the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce meeting, Tom Mullen, publisher of the town's weekly newspaper, the Newsletter Journal, introduces me to some of the city's business leaders.

"I'm 100 percent in support of it (the DM&E project)," says Katie Kudloch, a retired teacher who now works as a job training specialist for Weston County, "because our county is dying and we need something to give us hope."

Her chamber colleagues don't see things quite that bleakly, but there's general agreement in this community of 3,000 that something needs to be done to boost the city's sagging fortunes.

Virtually all of the region's oil and coal are in adjacent Campbell County, meaning Weston County and its towns, such as Newcastle and Upton, don't reap direct tax rewards from energy producers. But the DM&E plans to build a staging yard west of Newcastle that would eventually employ more than 100 workers. And residents of Newcastle and smaller communities in Weston County believe the railroad could be their saving grace.

Newcastle, which bills itself as the "Western Gateway to the Black Hills," exists because of coal and the Burlington Northern Railroad. Coal was discovered about seven miles northeast of Newcastle in the 1880s and a city, Cambria, sprang up near the mine almost overnight.

The town, which was laid out and planned by the railroad, had steam power, heat and electric lights, making it the model coal camp in the nation. The city fathers in Cambria, wanting to keep the workers in line and on task, forbade bars and dance halls in the village. But a new town, Newcastle, sprouted up just down the road and offered these amenities.

By 1928 all of the coal veins in the Cambria mine had been exhausted and the town died, leaving only depressions in the ground where buildings once stood. But Newcastle, through which the Burlington Northern Santa Fe still runs, grew and flourished.

These days, many of the town's residents are still employed by the railroad and it's hard to find anyone in Newcastle who will say anything bad about coal trains.

"I knew the railroad was here when I bought my house," Kudloch says. "So I knew what I was getting into. You get used to the noise after a while."

Mayor Mike Mills, whose father once raised livestock near Riverton, Wyo., is among the DM&E's biggest supporters.

"It would nearly double the county's taxable valuation," he says about the staging yard, "and give us more funds to make improvements. There seems to be a never-ending cry for new services, but there's silence on how to pay for it."

The promise of new development and new tax revenue comes at a time when the city is especially vulnerable. Fourteen months ago, fire destroyed four buildings housing five businesses on the city's historic main street.

"That's why DM&E is so important for this community," says Bob Bonnar, the reporter who's been covering the issue for the Newsletter Journal. "It's obvious we need a lot of help."

"Imagine this," Mullen chimes in. "Imagine some circumstances where Mayo Clinic would close its doors in Rochester and you get some idea what it would be like if we didn't have the railroad in this town."