Orange County will get a look at an 80-year-old transportation legend Thursday as the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 travels through.
The steam engine with its tender is more than 132 feet long; so long that it was designed with an articulated carriage that would bend to curves. It weighs 604 tons and could carry a freight train that weighed 3,600 tons, according to Britannica Encyclopedia.
Union Pacific’s Big Boy website said the company ordered 10 of the locomotives between 1941 and 1944. Beig Boy 4014 was built in 1941 and retired in 1961 with more than a million miles logged.
All 10 of the Big Boy locomotives were ordered to serve a mountainous route between Ogden, Utah, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Britannica said the steam engine trains were designed to carry heavy loads in the Wasatch Mountains with a grade of 1.55 percent.
By the 1960s, the Big Boy engines were retired. Some of the locomotives ended up in train museums, including one in Frisco, Texas.
Union Pacific then acquired one of locomotives from a California museum. The company restored the engine to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad in 2019. Since then, the locomotive sometimes takes to the tracks to go across the country so people get a look at transportation.
The train began its tour in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and crossed through several states. It spent Tuesday night in Houston and spend Wednesday night in Beaumont before starting on its Thursday trip. The steam engine, now running on oil rather than coal, will be seen traveling along UP tracks in the Orange County.
It will stop for only 15 minutes in West Orange along South Street at the Holly Street crossing. The time will be 9:30 to 9:45 in the morning. West Orange police will close off South Street between Henrietta and Broad streets. McDonald Baptist Church at South and Broad will allow parking for people who want to see or photograph the locomotive.
A group is also gathering at the Orange Depot Train Museum on Green Avenue to watch Big Boy travel by. The train will continue north east to the railroad bridge in Echo as it goes into Louisiana. It will then stop overnight in New Orleans before going to St. Louis, Denver, and home.
Union Pacific warns people not to get within 25 feet of the railroad tracks as the train goes by, or to stand on tracks. All tracks, trestles, railroad yards, and right-of-way land is private railroad property and people should not trespass.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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