The smoke belching out of steam locomotives, the depots, water towers and tracks leading to new places always beckoned Jim Ehernberger.

The 88-year-old Cheyenne railroad enthusiast, author, photographer and source for knowledge about Wyoming railroads remembers living for a time as a young boy in Bushnell, Nebraska, and going down to the depot where the agent treated him kindly.

At 15, three years after his family moved to Cheyenne, he recalls going on an excursion ride with the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club out of Denver over Sherman Hill in May 1953.

There were several people with cameras onboard that interested the teen. He got into a conversation with a man who held one and offered to sell it.

“He was a yard master, and he asked me when I would be 16,” Ehernberger recalled. “I said,

See Full Page