Popular Mechanics – by Tom Bentley
Americans like things big. Big like Texas, big like the rolling Mississippi, big like the heaviest made-out-of-butter cow sculpture. They also like things with big meanings, like the Declaration of Independence, D-Day, and the driving of the golden spike to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad, connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines on May 10, 1869 at Promontory, Utah.
The 150th anniversary of that unifying event recently took place, and the commemoration welcomed a merging of that metaphorical big with the literal: the return to service of one of the most heralded—and biggest—locomotives of all time.
The steam-driven locomotive might seem like a relic of bygone days, but tell that to the people cheering all the way to the clouds when the Big Boy 4014 pulled into Promontory for the Golden Spike ceremony, a steaming nova among other star locomotives.
Big Boy’s journey to Promontory wasn’t an easy one; its roaring up the ceremonial rails seemed an improbable gamble, considering that all eight existing units (of the 25 built for Union Pacific) of the Big-Boy-class steam engines had been decommissioned long ago. The 4014 was retired in late 1961, and spent the next 52 years eliciting gasps and whoops of delight at the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona, California.
The museum had rail enthusiasts from around the world making trips to L.A just to see the Big Boy, says Paul Guercio, the Vice Chairman of the Southern California Chapter of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, and a volunteer at RailGiants since 1989.
“Virtually everyone responded to it with awe just because of the sheer size of it,” Guercio says. “Most serious railfans had seen a Big Boy at one time or another, as there are eight of them preserved around the country. But even if someone has seen one before, it’s so big that it’s hard to get enough of it.”
How Big Is Big?
We’ll get into Union Pacific’s Olympian restoration of the 4014, but first we need to get some numbers out of the way. Big Boys they were and are: At 132 feet long, their frames had to be articulated, essentially, hinged so they could navigate curves. They weigh 1.2 million pounds, which means that any long-term forward motion necessitated their 56,000-pound coal capacity and their 24,000-gallon water capacity to perpetually push those massive pistons with steam.
The girth required a 4-8-8-4 wheel configuration to keep that thing rock-steady on the rails. With a puny 7,000 horsepower, Big Boys had a maximum tractive power of 135,375 pounds. Don’t worry if you can’t easily envision 135,375 pounds. Just know it could pull like hell.
Read the rest here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a27966255/big-boy-4014-badass-train/
One bad ass locomotive.
yup….if I had a gazillion dollas I’d buy that bad boy along with 20 or so passenger cars …put Henry on that train so he could track around the country teaching people about our precious Bill of Rights….of course the inside would be customized to Henry’s and Laura’s specifications 🙂 I had a dream that one day……………..
Sure has a weak ass set of train horns though. Never understood that.