The Powell High School Vocational Arts classes are creating a Baldwin 4-4-0 locomotive which will be displayed in the northwest breakout of the green pod.

The are busily working on the framing of the locomotive during the first part of this semester and hope to start the details by the end of it.

“Framing is always fast and easy; it’s the details that take the longest,” Mr. James Gilman, high school art teacher, said.

The Baldwin 4-4-0 locomotive was the first steam engine to enter Wyoming when the Trans-continental Railroad was being built. It changed the way people, and also goods were transported from the east coast to the west coast. And because the railroad was built through the unclaimed territory of Wyoming, it created the building blocks for 44th state admitted to the Union.

Gilman said he got the idea of building a locomotive because not only would it display the school’s pride but also the state’s pride of how the steam engine created “The Equality State.”

Although he isn’t going to take his locomotive to any competitions because of the size and longevity of this project, he hopes that visitors and students alike will appreciate how hard it is to create large scale models of many different transportation devices, like a submarine, a Viking ship, a space shuttle and a dragon in various break-out areas in the school as well as the stagecoach in the library.

Many students are not aware of the current project.

“I didn’t know that there was a locomotive being built,” said senior A.J. Lewis. “That will be a really cool addition to the school, being that it is something that has never been done before here at Powell High School.”

He also said he thinks all of the models and taxidermy “are really cool,” and when he comes back to visit after graduating, he can’t wait to see what has been built by the vocational arts students.

Gilman added that the train will be completed and hung in the break-out room closest to his classroom by the end of the school year next May if everything goes according to plan.