Union Pacific Big Boy!

[Brian Roth]

I was skimming headlines tonight and saw this:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/big-boy-worlds-oldest-locomotive-trnd/index.html

Lots of Youtube vids around with videos of the 4014 back on the tracks.  The billowing smoke and steam from that monster give me goosebumps!  lol

Bri

 

[PRR]

Still tracking:
https://www.up.com/forms/steam-trace.cfm
Grab the Lat/Lon from that screen, change slash to comma, put in Google, you get a g-Map.

The train is safe tonight. Parked right next to the West Chicago Police Dept. About where that red tank-car was last year.

 

[Brian Roth]

BUT!  What thrills me are the videos of that monster blowing smoke and steam at it moves on the tracks.

Kinda like seeing an Ampex MM-1000 moving 2" tape....but on a much smaller scale....lol

Bri

 

[Ricardus]

I was on vacation in Minneapolis a few weeks ago to go to my favorite sci fi con, and I should have stayed an extra week. The Big Boy came through town. My Mets also came to town to play the Twins, and a bunch of cool bands were playing as well. Just couldn't manage it with work commitments and what not.

 

[Tubetec]

The age of steam is long over here in Ireland , we had a rail network to rival anywhere on the planet at one point , but now most of it is closed .
It must have been thirsty work shoveling coal in an engine , I'll bet cold pints of beer were passed into the cab along the way , Id imagine on something like the 'Big Boy ' the coal delivery was at least semi automated as it used tons per hour .

I had a grand uncle who worked his whole life as 'Train Guard' , same fella would have drank 'Loch Eireann' dry if he had the chance , but they were the 'Good old days' after all 
Ironically I have  a family connection to the man who closed the 'West Cork Railway' also .

 

[PRR]

> The age of steam is long over here in Ireland

I am disappointed that Big Boy can't roll east of Chicago. Duh, "Union Pacific". If they came east, the Pennsylvania Railroad would break their kneecaps.

We "do" have a steamer in Downeast Maine. Steam IS "long over". Engine 470 last ran 65 years ago (essentially all my life).
https://i95rocks.com/steam-engine-470-to-arrive-in-ellsworth-this-july-touch-a-train-event-june-11th-video/
The local 4-mile tourist line (all they restored of a once extensive rail net) has been running Diesels but bought the last steamer which ever ran in Maine. It was on dead display for too many decades, and I don't expect it to run again anytime soon. Or ever make daily runs again. (Between-trip cleanout on a steamer is massive dirty work.) Still exciting.

Mt Washington NH's cog railway (which has one of the coggers from the Bar Harbor hillclimb) has stopped fooling with steam except a few track-days for fans. They have been building their own engines from highly computerized John Deere(?) Diesel engines. The steamers were just too costly and dirty.

Yes, large steamers like Big Boy had mechanical stokers for coal (tho I'm wondering if BB now burns oil). I doubt our 470 did; fireman was a Union Job so most railroads made the workers *work*.

 

[Ricardus]

(tho I'm wondering if BB now burns oil).

Yeah, the Big Boy was converted to oil. She has a tender behind her that is probably all water now, and there's a custom-looking  tanker car behind the tender that must be carrying oil. Sometimes I see two tankers behind the tender.

 

[Tubetec]

Vaping a big load of diesel up her snout sounds cleaner than coal alright , is the beast limited in its range by local laws/polution regs or does it go where it pleases?

 

[PRR]

> does it go where it pleases?

I only know one fuel-restriction. 1950s-1960s, you could not roll through West Virginia unless you burned coal (WV's #1 crop). Since this did not make economic sense with GM financing Diesels like Chevies, there was a period when pulverized coal was mixed in oil and burned in Diesels. Heavy lobbying got the law dropped.

No, the Union Pacific's Big Boy does not care to come East. The Pennsylvania RR was the largest corporation in the world, and bought-out dozens of smaller railroads to dominate out to west of Ohio, with a spur into Chigago. Union Pacific was a hundred small lines merged as one and rolled from Chicago to the Pacific. The Pennsylvania went bust 50 years ago, undermined by trucks and bad management. The Union Pacific covers much vaster territory where the economy of railroads competes with trucks on larger slower loads, and seems to be doing OK. OK enough to support a folly like a giant engine. And UP may be generally closer to their customers, so gets some benefit from the show-off.

 

[Tubetec]

Very territorial the railways ,
but it was slave labour that built it here , along with the forts and garrisons of the crown .
They skirted and tunneled the mountains to bring rail to Cork and Kerry , but the canals and waterways that served the mid and north of the country wasnt possible due to the numbers of hills and valleys in the southwest .
The butter, whiskey,salt beef and human traffic left by ship to either the colonies or the new world .