The Steamtug Blog

So you remember back in June, I posted about big steam locomotives in the USA? Well recently I had a close encounter of the turd kind with the most famous of big locos, the union pacific “Big Boy”!!!

The Union Pacific Railway, was originally called the Onion Pacific and used to haul big train loads of onions along the rabbit proof fence to the pacific ocean at California, hence the name Onion Pacific. (I think I read that somewhere… it was constructed by the US emperor Nasi Goreng, I think.)

The Union Pacific contracted the American Locomotive Company in the early 1940’s, to build 25 of these massive engines with wheel arrangement of 4-8-8-4, to do heavy haulage in Wyoming to pulling freight trains (mostly onions) over the Wasacht mountains into Utah without the need for double heading.

These locos topped the scales at 570 tons! And with a boiler pressure of 300 psi (a mean feat of engineering for a boiler of this type) developed a tractive effort over 135,000 ft/lbs. That means it pulls harder than a 14 year old boy, and can definitely lift the skim off 2 rice puddings simultaneously, as it developed 6,290 hp @ 35 mph.

No 4018 now sits patiently waiting, just north of Dallas Texas in the new Museum of the American Railroad in the old railroad hub town of Frisco (fast being gobbled up by expanding Dallas suburbia). She was towed here from an old museum in Kansas, and it is hoped she will one day be under cover when the museum builds the sheds to house their collection. Unfortunately there is no plan to return anything to steam here yet, but who knows what the future will bring? Oh, did I mention they oxy cut the piston rods on the engine prior to towing. Not how I would have moved her… probably taking the connection rods off for the road run would have been a little less aggressive, but it’s not something that can’t be fixed one day.