Big Boy Number Four Thousand and Fourteen

In nineteen forty-one, the American Locomotive Company delivered to the Union Pacific Railroad a machine that engineers and enthusiasts have struggled to describe without reaching for superlatives. The Big Boy locomotives were built to haul heavy freight over the Wasatch Range between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyoming, on grades that defeated every prior design. Twenty-five were built in total: twenty in nineteen forty-one, five more in nineteen forty-four.

A single Big Boy with its tender weighed one million, two hundred and eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds. One comparison offered by rail historians: it outweighed a Boeing seven forty-seven. The locomotives were articulated, meaning the front and rear sections pivoted independently to navigate curves. In service they were remarkable, and then diesel-electric engines arrived and made the economics of coal and crew simply impossible to sustain. Revenue service ended in nineteen fifty-nine.

Eight Big Boys survived into preservation. Seven stand static in museums across the country. The eighth is Number Four Thousand and Fourteen, which had been displayed at a museum in Pomona, California for decades. Union Pacific reacquired it in twenty thirteen and spent six years restoring it at their Steam Shop here in Cheyenne, converting it from coal to fuel oil. In May of twenty nineteen, Number Four Thousand and Fourteen moved under its own power for the first time in nearly sixty years.

It is based in Cheyenne now, certified as the largest, heaviest, and most powerful operational steam locomotive in the world. When it pulls out on excursion runs, people drive substantial distances to watch it pass.