Railworks America

UP's refurbishment of Big Boy 4014 has proven quite the event in the rail fan community. Certainly deserving of its own thread, so here it is. Post your own pictures of UP 4014 here, and share any insight on it's current whereabouts/ schedule.

Recently it's been announced that Big Boy will head from Omaha, NE to Boone, IA on 7/15. Rumors are percolating that she will head east towards the Great Lakes region shortly thereafter.

The Big Boy is indeed headed for the Great Lakes region! UP has just announced the schedule for the Midwest portion of Big Boy's tour : https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule/index.htm# From July 8th thru August 8th the Big Boy will be touring the UP system in the Midwest and Great Plains.

On October 12th and 13th Big Boy will return to the Rail Giants Museum in SoCal for a special excursion.

I look forward to posting some pictures late July when it tours my home state of WI!!

I plan to catch it again going over Cajon Pass in October.

I just got done last night editing my last video of my 3 week trip to the 150th celebration. The final tally is 47 videos with a total running time of 4hr 18min. The Big Boy video is 18 minutes long. They total 82GB of disk space. They consist of BNSF/UP's Mojave Sub (Tehachapi Pass), UP's Cima Sub (Afton Canyon/Basin, Kelso, Cima hill), UP's Evanston Sub (Echo Canyon), UP's Lakeside Sub (Little Mountain, Promontory Point, Lucin Cutoff causeway) and BNSF's Cajon Sub/UP's Mojave Sub (Cajon Pass).

At my rather slow upload speeds, it's gonna take a couple weeks to upload it all. I'll start doing it in the next week or so. I'll make a thread in the video section when it's all done. The footage of Big Boy leaving Union Station in Ogden was crisp and absolutely beautiful thanks to the clear skies and the rising morning sun lighting it up.

@ Gskid: Nicely done! I can't wait to see it!

cometcatt wrote:@ Gskid: Nicely done! I can't wait to see it!

Noticed you are in Wisconsin. I moved there from California as an adult and lived in Milwaukee from 1993-2010. I came back home to California to take care of my mother in her last years and still live here. I see that Altoona is the only official long public viewing stop in Wisconsin. That's quite a ways away from the state's two largest population centers (Madison and Milwaukee). Looking at google sat maps I can see why they chose it since it's more accessible to the public than in Milwaukee and seems to be a mile longer yard. It's staying overnight at Butler yard in Milwaukee (the state's largest city) and says no public access. But I suspect as was the case in Evanston, WY..... that UP staff will tolerate railfans walking up to Big Boy for pictures. We will see. That yard is crammed into a mixed industrial area and has a road that runs near it for some people to park on. But the nearby Capitol Drive retail shopping centers have enough parking to handle any huge influx of fans if that were to happen. They would have to walk a bit though to get to the yard.

@ Gskid: I'm from Milwaukee, and my place of work happens to back up to the UP line just half a mile outside of Butler Yard. I'll get to see it go by, but I might try to walk over to the yard and see what happens. Either way, i'll probably head up to Altoona, just in case I can't find a way to see it in Butler. However, I do want to know who at UP thought it would be a good idea to put the only viewing stop 3 hours out from the state's two biggest cities- knowing the area, it seems like it would be easy enough to host a viewing stop at Butler.

Yeah the only alternative would have been Mitchell yard on the southside. It's wide and pretty empty of cars most of the time, but it doesn't have the best of access options nor good places to park near it. It is also just a switching and storage yard for the southside industries. It has no real UP facilities such as buildings, fuel and water. I think it has a sanding tower and not much else. I lived around KK and Mitchell street near the Canadian Pacific line. It has far more traffic than UP's line through town, so I'd watch them most of the time.

I was gonna wait until I uploaded all my videos, but decided to upload the BIg Boy #4014 one first and get to all the rest of them at a later time. Enjoy!

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=21422

Here are a couple of pictures from #4014's visit to Altoona, WI:

And another:

I didn't realize that Big Boy was a hybrid vehicle and needed recharging.

Here are a whole bunch of pics from 4014's visit to Milwaukee, taken at UP's Butler Yard.

And another:

And one more:

And finally, one more: