Development of northeastern Wyoming accelerated after the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad reached Newcastle on November 17, 1889. The Burlington's Grand Island and Northern Wyoming line made the newly created town the western terminus when construction stopped for the winter, and as a railroad division point Newcastle quickly became a central hub for oil, coal, timber, and livestock interests. By 1900, Newcastle had 756 residents, most of them railroad workers and miners, and by 1950 the population had grown to 3,395. The railroad's parent companies included the Burlington and Missouri River Rail Road Company, which in 1882 built from the Missouri River to Denver, the Grand Island and Wyoming Central Railroad, which in 1886 built from Grand Island, Nebraska, to the Wyoming border, and the Grand Island and Northern Wyoming Railroad, which in 1888 built from northeastern Wyoming to southern Montana. Newcastle's first depot was a hand car house unloaded from a construction flatcar the day before the first passenger train arrived, and in 1890 E.R. Maris, operator of the newly installed telegraph lines, sent word that Newcastle, Territory of Wyoming, now had railroad connections.