The National Railroad Museum: Eisenhower's Train and the Big Boy
Near Green Bay, Wisconsin
On the grounds of what is now called the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, there is a locomotive so large that standing next to it feels architectural. Union Pacific Big Boy Number Four Thousand Seventeen is one of the biggest steam locomotives ever built, one hundred thirty-two feet long, one million, two hundred thousand pounds, with drive wheels nearly six feet tall. It hauled wartime freight over the Wasatch Mountains in Utah during the nineteen forties.
Today it sits outdoors in Wisconsin, still drawing crowds who want to stand next to something overwhelming. The museum was founded in nineteen fifty-six by community volunteers who began collecting equipment before most Americans thought of railroads as history. Two years later a joint resolution of Congress formally designated it the National Railroad Museum, a recognition that made it one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the country.
The collection runs to over seventy pieces of rolling stock and thousands of smaller artifacts, from uniforms to photographs. Among the most significant is British Railways Class A Four Number Six Oh Oh Oh Eight, named Dwight D. Eisenhower.
This locomotive hauled the Supreme Allied Commander and his staff across Britain during the Second World War. After the war it came here, to Green Bay, where it remains. A train that carried the general who planned D-Day stands in the same city where Bart Starr ran a quarterback sneak in minus thirteen degree cold to win an NFL championship.
Green Bay collects history at an improbable rate for a city of its size.
