CHASING THE ‘BIG BOY’
More famous than Flying Scotsman? Surely not… CHRIS PHILLIPSON travels to Wyoming, USA, to photograph the ‘Big Boy’ – an engine he’s dreamt of seeing for 65 years. Was it worth the wait? You bet!
Hunting down No. 4014 in the USA
As soon as Union Pacific announced that the restored ‘Big Boy’ 4-8-8-4 No. 4014 would take part in the ‘Great Race to Ogden’, my flights to Denver were booked!
The ‘race’ commemorated the 150th anniversary of the driving of the golden spike at Promontory, Utah, on May 10 1869, which created the first transcontinental railroad by joining the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, following the epic laying of ten miles of track in one day by Chinese and Irish labourers. The ‘race’ was to be formed of two trains: one hauled by UP’s ‘FEF-3’ 4-8-4 No. 844, leaving Cheyenne for Ogden on April 28, and the second hauled by the newly restored ‘Big Boy’ on May 4.
The restoration of No. 4014 had been seven years in the planning, with restoration starting in 2015, led by UP’s steam supremo, Ed Dickens.
As with all steam restorations, fixing deadlines for completion can be fraught – and so it turned out to be. So much so, in fact, that the first train with No. 844 was cancelled to allow crews to concentrate on completing No. 4014.
I watched news media with some trepidation as doom-mongers in the US steam fraternity were sounding off like Private Frazer in Dad’s Army!
I arrived in Denver on May 1 and heard that the ‘Big Boy’ was due to make its first loaded trial run from Cheyenne the next day. Would it make the 4th?
The multinational rumour mill that I met on a footbridge in Laramie was mainly positive, as commercially and politically a ‘no show’ at Ogden for the ‘Spike 150’ ceremony by two state governors would have been a corporate disaster. Finally, the news came that the ‘Big Boy’s’ trial run to Greeley, Colorado, had taken place at dusk on May 2, which left just 30 hours for the UP team to iron out any last-minute problems!
After final adjustments, the locomotive was ready for its rededication in Cheyenne on May 4. The journey west across Wyoming, now with No. 844 tucked inside, could begin.
A diesel locomotive was also attached, not as a helper, but to provide a ‘dynamic
load bank’, as the load of nine coaches was a mere plaything for the potential power of No. 4014.
To its immense credit, the UP Steam Team had achieved what was once thought an impossible dream.
AS BUSY AS THE M25
UP’s route west to Ogden, Utah, passes through roughly 450 miles of Wyoming landscape. It is the second most sparsely populated state in the USA. The state capital, Cheyenne, has a population of 65,000 against a total state population of 578,000; half that of Birmingham in the UK. They say in Wyoming: “Dial a wrong number and you’ll get someone who you know!”
However, within 100 miles of each end of the route are the conurbations of Denver and Salt Lake City, with potentially large spectator numbers.
I’d visited this lonely area across Wyoming several times before. I used May 3 to scout out and confirm photographic locations that would let me avoid the total ban on highway parking alongside the railroad, the huge crowds and the serious four-wheel-drive back country dirt roads around the famous 8,000ft summit of Sherman Hill.
At Medicine Bow, my wife and I visited the Virginian Hotel. She commented on how quiet the place was and asked a member of staff when the tourist season would start. The answer: “Tomorrow at around 2.30pm, when the ‘Big Boy’ stops by!”
On May 4, I headed for the old coal mining town of Hanna and parked well off a dirt road about three hours before the passage of No. 4014.
In that time, I saw maybe a dozen other vehicles. Thirty minutes before the special train was due, I had my first encounter with US rail fans. A continuous posse of dust-covered vehicles thundered down the dirt road. Following it was my second encounter: state troopers. With blue and red lights flashing, and with their hands on their gun holsters, they were ordering anyone deemed to be unsafely parked to get off the highway.
Luckily, I was OK, but many drivers had to leave to find safer spots.
The posse was still arriving when I had my first sighting of Nos. 4014 and 844. Images were in the bag, as would be plenty of others over the next two days.
Quite how some chasers managed to film and photograph pacing shots at 45-50mph on Interstate 80, and in tailbacks as dense as anything you might see on the M25, I cannot imagine – and all the while, the state troopers were patrolling.
I am told that the authorities take the same action with large rail fan crowds anywhere in the USA. I have since seen some astonishing footage of about 20 miles of cars parked three-deep either side of the highway west of Laramie and heard of a 12-mile line of traffic trying to get into Ogden for the ‘Big Boy’s’ arrival.
All the hotels along the route were fully booked and many people spent multiple nights sleeping in cars or recreational vehicles.
At one location, a tour bus turned up and disgorged around 70 photographers into a remote but crowded location at a level crossing. On the other side of the crossing sat a rancher in his Dodge Ram truck, backing up his ‘DO NOT TRESPASS’ signs. Landowners in the USA take such encroachment very seriously.
It was the only place that I got ‘bowled’ by an eastbound freight. Frustratingly, all I saw was the clag from the engines over the top of the wagons.
In the afternoon of May 5, the train stopped for servicing in the yard at Rock Springs, which enabled me to get some close-up detail images and to chat with some of the UP staff. They were very surprised and appreciative that I’d come 4,800 miles to see their locomotives.
I decided to try some departure shots before dawn the next day, and was in the yard at 3am as UP staff prepared the train for departure at 4am.
The two giants of steam gave two long blasts on their whistles and, with rear-facing cylinder drain cocks open, they started to move. The whistle on the ‘Big Boy’ is akin to a ship’s hooter and it must have woken half the town.
There was also an accompanying scramble of tripods being put away and car doors banging as the posse started a chase through the night to Evanston.
I stayed to watch and listen for over 15 minutes as that deep whistle echoed back off the surrounding hills and canyon sides; an almost mournful, lonesome and yet beautiful sound carried back on a freezing Wyoming wind under a starlit sky.
65-YEAR WAIT
The first time I saw the incredible outline of a ‘Big Boy’ was in a book given to me as a Christmas present when I was seven years old. Sixty five years later, I had the huge pleasure to witness and photograph a ‘Big Boy’ together with the huge crowds who flocked to see it.
Am I glad I went? Yes. And I’m still smiling weeks later! Here in the UK, we are extremely fortunate to experience main line steam on an almost daily basis at times. In the USA, I’ve been told that although there is huge enthusiasm for steam, there is much less of a willingness for enthusiasts to fund and help preserve or restore these huge impressive steam giants. The high cost of operating, maintaining and obtaining public indemnity insurance for main line steam is very much in the hands of ‘big boys’ such as the Union Pacific Railroad Corp.
Will the ‘Big Boy’ grab Flying Scotsman’s crown as the most famous steam locomotive in the world? If this year’s planned fare-paying tours with the ‘Big Boy’ attract as many people from all corners of the USA, Europe, Australia and Japan as I found in May, then, for 2019 at least, it certainly will.
●● To find out where and when the ‘Big Boy’ is running, see www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule
UNMATCHED FOR SIZE
As with all railways in the 1920s and 1930s, ever-increasing train weights and speeds demanded that Union Pacific went from 2-8-0s to 2-10-2s, and lumbering 25mph compound Mallet 2-8-8-0s, to three-cylinder Gresley valve geared 4-12-2s by the early 1930s. This was for the demanding route of the Trans-Continental railroad across Wyoming into Utah.
The 4-12-2s were developed into the 4-6-6-4 simple articulated ‘Challengers’ in the mid-1930s, but by 1941, even they couldn’t handle the increasing wartime tonnages.
Therefore, UP’s Otto Jabelmann, in conjunction with ALCo of Shenectady, New York, enlarged the 4-6-6-4 design to a simple articulated 4-8-8-4. While the first (No. 4000) was being constructed, a worker at ALCo famously chalked ‘Big Boy’ on the smokebox door, and the name stuck for the first 20 ‘4884-1’ and final five ‘4884-2s’.
A further lengthened ‘4884-3’ with oil firing was proposed, but the end of the war and the rapid onset of dieselisation curtailed the plan.
Although the Virginian Triplexes were heavier and other locomotives in the USA had a higher tractive effort, the ‘Big Boys’ were unmatched in sheer size.
Their original home ground was over UP’s 8,000ft Wasatch summit between Ogden, Utah and Green River, Wyoming. Eventually they could be found anywhere between Ogden and Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they could handle freights of up to 4,500 tons at 25mph, and were designed to run at up to 80mph, although they rarely exceeded 50mph.
The last revenue-earning ‘Big Boy’-hauled freight was on July 21 1959, after which they were all stored in serviceable condition until August 1961, when disposals began. Eight of the 25 have survived (SR494).
UP also owns runner ‘FEF-3’ 4-8-4 No. 844 and ‘Challenger’ 4-6-6-4 No. 3985 (awaiting overhaul).