Major Components of Big Boy 4014 Back Together!

[gtrtroger]

So, has anybody assembled a commemorative consist of this historic event yet?

[GSkid]

Well thanks to that woman getting killed last year, apparently law enforcement is super freaked out about this trip. Word on the street from other rail fans seems to indicate major headaches are ahead. If you park on the side of the highway to get a shot, instant $250 ticket. Apparently some have already got some tickets when following it to Evanston, WY where it was over an hour late and is staying for just under 48 hours there.

I was told that even on county roads that are off the highway that follow parallel to the track, you must be beyond the fence line. I’m assuming that means you can’t park on any of the right of way of the road no matter how far back you are from it. Sounds like you basically have to be on the private property side of it.

And that’s another thing. They have apparently gotten the word out to ranchers and property owners about this impending onslaught and already they are locking many of their gates. I also heard UP has hired some private security to guard a lot of their property from railfans.

Also word is that you will not be able to pace the train and that law enforcement is gonna have their cars side by side following it to make sure no one gets ahead of them. I’m not sure if that means the highway, backroads or both. I’m being told to find a safe spot and wait for the train to pass, cuz you are gonna be lucky to even get one shot of the big boy, let alone more than one from different spots. I was told it’s gonna do a stop in Echo and one in Morgan before heading into Ogden.

So things aren’t looking so hot for getting much video of it. To add insult to injury, the forecast is thunderstorms the next 2 days so that’s another unwanted challenge. It’s already sprinkling a little here and there now.

I hope it’s not as bad as everyone says it’s going to be, but at least I prepared for the possible disappointment of not getting much..... if any..... video of it.

EDIT: little update....

I got access to it at the yard in Evanston. It’s boiler has been off since this morning, but you can still feel some of the residual heat coming off it. It says on the website that there will be no public access to the train tomorrow. But the security staff who are local UP employees that basically signed up for babysitting big boy duty told me they haven’t heard of the restriction on their end, so we are welcome to come by. Got some pictures but I’ll come early to avoid the small crowds in the picture frame.

I had a long conversation with a UP employee who is running with the train. He normally rebuilds and maintains their executive train cars. Despite some rumors of a crank problem on big boy, he said he wasn’t aware of any. They simply had to oil up the drivetrain from time to time.

There are a lot of rumors sometimes and we will see if the law enforcement part and the rest of it is true. Some guy said there was security at the summit to shoo people away. But on my trip to Evanston since originally posting this, I looked over and saw nobody of any kind at the summit as I was driving by. So we will see in the next couple days what’s fact and what was simply rumor.

[buzz456]

If there is anything worse than the Friday morning ladies bowling league for passing rumors around it's a bunch of nutty rail fans. Just go with the flow and try to enjoy.

[GSkid]

If there is anything worse than the Friday morning ladies bowling league for passing rumors around it's a bunch of nutty rail fans. Just go with the flow and try to enjoy.

Well the day is over and a bit of a light rainy one at that. This was my first time ever at one of these excursion train events. There was a lot of truth to the rumors and some things that luckily didn't come true. UP did hire private event security, but they are only down at Ogden yard and nowhere else on the route. They did have some of their MOW guys in trucks shooing people away that were too close to the tracks, but the vast majority of people were never bothered. There were just too many people spread over the 77 miles of the route for them to really have any real impact.

They had these state incident trucks with rear facing LED signs driving on the right shoulder with a Utah highway patrol car on the shoulder about 1/4 mile ahead of them. They paced the train and the LED sign warned that tickets would be written for parking on the side of the road. They were not blocking traffic, but they had the effect of people driving slower than normal. You were allowed to pass them. I only saw 1 ticket being written on the whole route.

Echo Canyon Road that parallels the highway on the opposite of the track was basically left alone by law enforcement. No fence lines where being enforced and people were parking wherever they wanted unbothered. Tons of state and county law enforcement were out in huge numbers that included a helicopter in the air, but they surprising left people alone for the most part. There were not only a huge number of railfans along the route, but also a ton of non-railfans that just wanted to see out of curiosity. When the train did a short stop at Echo, a local high school band greeted it playing songs you'd hear at a football game.

What amazed me most was not only the sheer number of railfans chasing the train, but it almost seemed like organized chaos. There were no accidents that I could see and people were very courteous drivers by letting people into the dense traffic. It was so hectic that i was expecting something bad to happen and yet the caravan of madness kept chugging along in a relatively orderly manor.

UP stopped all rail traffic on the route so that it wouldn't block the view of the train....with the exception of one Z train the was climbing as big boy was close to the end of the canyon. So I feel bad for the few that may have missed their shot because of it. But it only effected a part of the route that had the least amount of people beside the tracks.

Now I was warned that due to the crowds and traffic on the canyon, that I should expect to only get one shot of it on video. For the majority of people including a friend of mine, they only got one shot. Due to quick and smart driving....and a little luck.... I managed to get 4 shots of the train. I got it starting down the grade at the Wahsatch summit... then just before it entered the town of Echo....a few miles past Echo.... and as it just came out of the canyon into Ogden. You'll see in my shot just before Echo of all these stupid people scrambling to put coins on the tracks as the train is barreling towards them. And that's how people get hit and get these things canceled.

While trying to race ahead of the train to get my next shot, the slower than normal traffic inadvertently had me pacing beside the train. So I just pulled out my iPhone and pointed it at the train while I drove with my left hand. So that's bonus footage.

One interesting side note. This cameraman sent from a Swiss television station to get footage of the train, missed the shot of it coming into Ogden because he was too close to the tracks and pulled his camera away to avoid getting it hit. He now had no moving video to bring back to his station. He asked me if I could send him my footage of it entering Ogden. I said sure and gave him my email. So it looks like my clip is gonna be seen by thousands in Switzerland. What an odd twist to my trip.

Now I need to sleep to prepare for the huge crowds at the golden spike ceremony tomorrow.

[ZekTheKid]

The big event has made headlines here on the East Coast:

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[buzz456]

I didn't think WaPo knew there was anything there between the East and West coasts.

[ZekTheKid]

I didn't think WaPo knew there was anything there between the East and West coasts.

[GSkid]

Yeah that' pretty cool. It was a fun event at Ogden, but in the end it was a little anti-climatic. They had the governor of Utah there along with I think the COO of Union Pacific presenting. Couldn't exactly recall his title. I was told the CEO was there, but I don't recall him being mentioned nor did he come to the stage. They did bring up a descendant relative of one of the Chinese workers who helped build the track to promontory. What made it a bit anti-climatic for a lot of those in attendance was when the COO calls the Big Boy in to meet the parked #844. It moves in... stops.... then neither blow their whistle at all to mark the encounter. Not long after, the presentation basically came to an end with some VIPs getting pictures hammering an oversized golden spike in front of the locomotives. A ton of VIPs there were from Asia and their press.

Overall, the event at Ogden was pretty cool. There was some railroad related stuff being sold in front of Union station, but most booths were generic street fair type stuff like selling jewelry, paintings and lots of food. I guess to make it also appealing to regular folk who don't care about trains.

I didn't get to the actual 150th anniversary event at Promontory on May 10th. I thought I could just drive up there and park like I did at the Ogden event. I was unaware you needed a ticket, which was sold in limited numbers to keep the event of a particular size. I was told the last batch was sold back on April 1st. So I filmed trains on the causeway route across the salt lake instead. I was told the traffic was a nightmare of up to a 1 1/2 hour line of cars. The actual event was about 3 hours long, There were fireworks and a flyby of F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters. I saw them practicing over the lake earlier that morning. I was told there were like 34 tour buses and tons of cars and motor homes. My friend said it was so crowded there that he never did make it up to the two locomotives to get a picture before his tour bus was to leave.

Big Boy's return trip with #844 to Cheyenne out of Ogden was the most beautiful of the week. Normally it is pretty clear in Ogden and the clouds stick around on the eastern side of the mountains. But for once the mountains were also clear of clouds. I got 4 shots (again) of the train on it's roughly 80 mile trip to Evanston, Wyoming where it would stop for the night. The traffic was way worse this time around. Otherwise I think I could have gotten a couple more shots. While there had been an SD70ACe with it on it's trip into Ogden, it left with an ET44 this time around.

There is a little town called Uintah which is where the tracks start to climb out of the Ogden area and into Echo canyon. I wanted to get the shot of the start of the climb. I got it, but missed the pass by because my camera auto-focused on a couple branches of a bush in front of me. I wanted to cry because it would have been a great extended shot. But I did get the approach and most importantly the climb. Although on the climb, I had to move my camera and could not get the tripod leveled in time. So I just closed the legs and mono-poled it in my hand. Luckily my optical stabilization did a decent job with my hand moving from heavy breathing. I had to run to this spot up a very long hill in time to get the train and my breathing hadn't settled yet. That's why I had no time to properly set up my tripod there. Gonna have to do some creative editing on this one sadly thanks to the auto-focus snafu.

The other shots went well. I got a great shot of it starting out of Ogden's Union station... although a loud helicopter watching it above us was ticking off the crowd taking video. I got a shot of it approaching Echo for a stop there and an awesome one of it snaking through the red rocks of the upper canyon.

So I had a fun time over all. I'm literally head to toe in bite welts from mosquitoes and especially no-see-ums (biting midges). They were in full force out at the lake causeway starting around 3pm. I'm going back out for some more shots of trains, but armed with bug repellent this time.... then back home to rest, recover and edit my videos.

[GSkid]

Union Pacific's official highlights video of the Ogden event.....




And the entire 30 minute video of the presentation was uploaded by someone. It starts at about the 6:00 mark.....



I was wrong in my last post. After watching these videos, I do now for sure remember seeing the CEO go on stage. I think the reason I had forgotten about it was because at the time he went up, I remember being distracted with half listening to him speak and at the same time I was half occupied with trying to find a good spot in the crowd to film the eventual meeting of the locomotives. In the end... there were too many people in front of me. My video was taken from too far in the back of the crowd with my iPhone and I doubt I'll include it in my final video. It's more crowd than locomotives. Pretty underwhelming!

[ErikGorbiHamilton]

5 Minutes out of 15 minutes of total pacing up Echo Canyon:



We were doing some crazy stuff to keep up. Bunch of us at the front of the pack were playing leapfrog all the way up the canyon. My friend in the front passenger seat got much better audio and longer video than I did but he is gonna take his time and edit some parts and what not.

being in the lead most of the time we photo bombed so many people LMAO! Seen some drone video on Reddit where you can see him leaning out the window.

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The next morning in Evanston we went to the yard for a good 5 minutes and took some nice morning sun pictures:

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After that we chased him out of town and caught him at two spots before we called it a trip and started our way back.

The chase was well worth it. We kept saying, even after we had called the trip, in disbelief, "We paced a Big Boy..."

[evafan002]

..... dern that is EPIC!.. only thing i can think of that would be better would be pacing a triple header of 4014 3985 and 844..