After the event at Spencer, most of us Eastern rail buffs have spent immense time and money chasing the fleet, sharing one goal in mind: catching all 20 in the wild!

Residing in a part of NS's system where heritage locomotives show up frequently has enabled me to photograph the fleet in a relatively short order. However, one locomotive in particular, Central of New Jersey SD70Ace No. 1071, evaded me for nearly a year.

Then, on rainy July 7, my day came as I photographed No. 1071 leading a northbound empty hopper train to Roanoke across NS's Pumpkin Vine. Chasing the move from Henry to Roanoke, Va., I managed to photograph the train in seven different locations.

Looking back over the past year, I remember countless good times shared with friends while out chasing these locomotives. They have definitely given me extra motivation to shoot on days that I probably never would have ventured trackside.

 Here’s a review of the past year, including six of my favorite shots depicting heritage units and lastly, one of the CNJ that enabled me to say, “I've photographed all 20 in the wild.”

Photography:

On an absolutely gorgeous afternoon, Nos. 8103 and 8102 parade westbound out of the famous twin-portals at Montgomery, Va., with a hopper train returning to the coalfields of West Virginia. This duo is perhaps one of my favorite pairs photographed, the colors of both units contrasted so well together.

Autumn colors are beginning to shine as No. 8105, featuring the Interstate paint scheme, leads an eastbound PGNX train up the 0.7-percent grade at Merrimac, Va., on a breathtakingly beautiful evening in Southwest Virginia. October was an excellent month for heritage sightings in this area, as several of the units were roaming the Pocahontas region.

Shoving hard on the rear of eastbound loads assaulting the 2.07-percent grade to Clark's Gap, No. 1068 in Erie paint and No. 1067 in Reading creep across the massive viaduct at Covel, W.Va., on a beautiful December afternoon. The helpers have another 5 miles of grade before they can cut off and return to Elmore Yard in Mullens. This is a perfect depiction of heritage units earning their keep on mountain railroading!

On a bitter cold winter afternoon, No. 1072 in Illinois Terminal livery rolls across the magnificent viaduct at Coopers, W.Va., leading a train of westbound empties toward Williamson, on NS's busy Pocahontas main line. A keen eye can spot the old abandoned N&W Bluestone Branch underneath the structure; the branch used to provide a connection with the Virginian at Matoaka.

 After a 6-inch snowfall on the first day of spring, No. 8102 in Pennsylvania Railroad paint shoves hard on the rear of No. 83A past a waterfall at Falls Mills, Va., before stalling out just a couple miles east of town. A 10-mph slow order caused the train to not build up enough speed to make the hill into Bluefield on wet rail.

Possibly the luckiest shot I have ever taken, No. 8104 in Lehigh Valley paint and No. 8102 are side by side in Falls Mills, Va., as 8104 shoves loads toward Bluefield on main two, and 8102 backs downgrade after stalling out, to get another running start on the hill. I remember the moment well. Several of us were so ecstatic about what we just captured. A perfect example of being in the right place at the right time!
 

Last but not least, the heritage unit that allowed me to say: "I've shot all 20 in the wild"

Nearing the end of its run from Belews Creek, N.C., to Roanoke, No. 757 charges upgrade through Starkey, Va., with No. 1071 in Central of New Jersey livery proudly leading the way, glistening in afternoon light. A super-friendly engineer gives extra blasts of the horn, almost like he was celebrating with me.

Conclusion:

I want to give a quick shout-out to Andrew Fletcher for inspiring NS to do such a generous thing, and Norfolk Southern for making it happen and all the wonderful events and kindness they have shown us railfans. We can never say thank you enough!

Thanks for viewing and reading. Hope you enjoy the images, and to those of you who have the same goal I had, best of luck in your journey to catching all 20. Be safe and have fun!

June 18 marked my one year anniversary at Trains magazine, and I've seen a lot in my first year here. In no particular order, here are some favorites:

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/3175.Stockton.jpg" position="left"]A BNSF Railway freight prepares to take the connection onto home rails in Stockton, Calif., in March 2013.[/caption] WINTERAIL – In March I traveled to Stockton, Calif., to attend Winterail, a large railroad multimedia event held annually. The premise, of course, is that Trains sends a representative to staff a table and be available to contributors, both established and potential. What the event turned out to be, however, was a chance for me to meet some of my greatest influences in railroad photography, including Ted Benson, Dave Styffe, Dick Dorn, and Stan Kistler. Yes, I was there to be available to the photographers, but the event really made my heroes available to me. While I was in Stockton I got my first taste of California railroading, too.

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/6318.CSRM.jpg" position="right"]Normally off-limits to visitors, the California State Railroad Museum's shops are key to keeping the museum exhibits fresh.[/caption] CALIFORNIA STATE RAILROAD MUSEUM – I will be the first to tell you, I'm not a "museum guy." I want to see the trains roll by, hear them thunder across the countryside, and feel the ground shake as 13,200 hp defy gravity. But there's still something special about the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. The displays are incredibly well done and relevant, the old shops are amazing, and where else can you climb up in a Cab-Forward? (No, really, I'm asking, where else? That was neat!)

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7317.Zephyr.jpg" position="left"]The eastbound California Zephyr arrives in Sacramento for my first trip on the legendary train. At right, an Amtrak California train set lays over.[/caption] CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR – I'm cheating here. The first three items on my list are from the same trip, but since I'm making up the rules as I go, that doesn't really matter. On the return from Winterail, I split a Superliner Roomette with friend Scott Lothes. This was my first trip on the legendary train. We boarded in Sacramento and rode all the way to Chicago, where I connected with a Hiawatha to Milwaukee. The food and onboard service were great, the scenery is spectacular, and we were an hour early into Chicago! A perfect trip all around!

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/8156.Talgo.jpg" position="right"]Wisconsin's two Talgo train sets sit inside the silent manufacturing plant in Milwaukee in May 2013.[/caption]TALGO – I missed the chance to help with the January 2013 feature on Talgo's manufacturing operation in Milwaukee, but I did arrive in time to see both new Oregon train sets depart the city. In late November, I saw the first set pass the Waukesha depot on its way to Pueblo, Colo., for testing. In May, I saw the second Oregon set depart from the factory on its way to Seattle to enter revenue service. I also got to see the two largely forgotten Wisconsin sets at the Talgo plant. Those sets are stuck in limbo pending the outcome of litigation between Talgo and the state. Hopefully soon we will have a resolution to the matter.

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/6305.Conrail.jpg" position="left"]Norfolk Southern's Conrail-painted heritage unit is on display at National Train Day 2013 in Chicago.[/caption]HERITAGE UNITS – I arrived at the Trains offices about two weeks before the rest of the staff traveled to Spencer, N.C., to cover the Norfolk Southern heritage unit extravaganza. Hey, someone had to stay back and answer the phone. (At least that's what Jim told me.) Even though I left Ohio for Wisconsin soon after the first NS units hit the road, I have still managed to see five of them: Conrail, Illinois Terminal, Lackawanna, Monongahela, and Penn Central. I've also seen a few of the Amtrak and Union Pacific heritage units in my years of train-watching. Who says railroading today is boring?

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/5415.Miami.jpg" position="right"]A southbound TriRail commuter train departs the Hollywood, Fla., station in January 2013.[/caption]MIAMI — In January 2013 I flew to Florida to attend the Nation Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association's annual convention in Miami Beach. (Life's rough that way some times.) There are many more aspects to railroading than just locomotives, and this convention is a great place to see them. While in Florida, I also got to visit the fine folks at TriRail and photograph their shops and trains and see the Gold Coast Railroad Museum.

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/8713.National-Train-Day.jpg" position="left"]A children's train ran outside Toledo's Amtrak station for National Train Day 2013 in May.[/caption]NATIONAL TRAIN DAY, TWICE! —Most people are content to celebrate National Train Day once, but I had such a good time I wanted to do it again. The first weekend in May, I attended National Train Day in Toledo, Ohio, a city that has held its event "early" due to the availability of Amtrak display equipment. A week later I joined the "real" National Train Day in Chicago, and got to take Amtrak there!

Southern Railway 2-8-2 No. 4501 is coming along in the shop at Tenneesee Valley Railroad Museum. Note the feedwater heater apparatus in the smokebox and on top.[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/3386.DSC_5F00_2558.JPG" position="right" targeturl="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/3386.DSC_5F00_2558.JPG"]No. 4501's rebuilt trailing truck should help steer the engine better, and a new Sellers non-lifting injector from Strasburg has been affixed.[/caption] CHATTANOOGA — On the wall of the Robert M. Soule Shops at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum is a park bench-sized sign with legendary 1960s Southern Railway President D.W. Brosnan’s famous axiom, “It can’t be done” with the “n’t” crossed out by a slash. It is a most appropriate sign for the sight that unfolds beneath it.

This was the Mikado that launched Southern and successor Norfolk Southern on a 28-year series of steam excursions with a host of locomotives from a tiny 0-4-0 replica of an 1828 engine to a giant Norfolk & Western 2-6-6-4.

The 4501 was the freight hog that Southern presented in its hallowed passenger green and gold as the pride of a profitable railroad during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s when much Eastern and Midwestern railroading was in trouble.[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/4705.DSC_5F00_2836.JPG" position="left" targeturl="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/4705.DSC_5F00_2836.JPG"]No. 4501's tender with stoker installed.[/caption]This was the first mainline engine that so many people saw in steam or took their first mainline steam trip behind (including me in 1966 for my first viewing in Asheville, N.C., and August 1975 on a Knoxville, Tenn.-Jellico, Tenn., round trip).The museum and Norfolk Southern are once again counting on the 4501 to be a roving goodwill ambassador as part of the railroad’s 21st Century Steam excursions for employees and the public. The 4501 is also TVRM’s pride and joy, the engine that made the operation famous.[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/2781.DSC_5F00_2963.JPG" position="right" targeturl="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/2781.DSC_5F00_2963.JPG"]Oil lubricated main bearings for the 4501's drivers.[/caption]To get to an operating 4501, though, is an arduous task. The 1911 Baldwin last steamed in 1998, and it needed lots of work to run again when it entered the shop in 2011. This included a 1,472-day boiler inspection, running gear repairs, and a host of upgrades.

Today, the shop force is closing in on the day when 4501 will steam again, and last week, they passed a huge milestone when they installed three of the four pairs of 63-inch driving wheels under the engine.

The list of work that is going into everyone’s favorite Mikado is impressive:

• An almost completely new firebox.
• A rebuilt Hodges trailing truck that includes modifications to help guide the engine through curves.
• Roller bearings on front and trailing guide wheels.
• A copy of a Worthington SA type feedwater heater from a Chinese 2-10-2.
• A stoker from a Canadian National 4-6-2.
• An oil lubrication system for the driving axles instead of troublesome grease. Incidentally, those Armstrong lubricators are springloaded, constantly replenished by a mechanical lubricator, and come from England’s North Yorkshire Moors Railway, thus adding another international aspect to the engine’s return.

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/4010.DSC_5F00_2965.JPG" position="left" targeturl="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/4010.DSC_5F00_2965.JPG"]Springloaded lubricator pads for the drivers.[/caption]The appearance of the “new” 4501 may be jarring to those whose experience with the engine goes back years — the feedwater heater adds a small rectangular box to the top of the smokebox. But doing so may add 10 percent to 15 percent more horsepower, or enough for another coach. This modification, which many of her sister SR Mikados received 85 years ago, is in line with standard railroad shop practices. So, visually jarring or not, it still “fits.”

With the three sets of drivers in place — the fourth would block access to the arch tubes, yet to be installed — the next phase is to load the tubes and flues, roll those, and air test the boiler for leaks. Once those are addressed, the crew can perform a hydrostatic test of the boiler using warm water to check for leaks.[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7587.DSC_5F00_3061.JPG" position="right" targeturl="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7587.DSC_5F00_3061.JPG"]Kevin Miller, in yellow hard hat, and Shane Meador, left, and Brian Hunt, right, tighten up the binders on the No. 2 axle.[/caption]After that is months of work to run piping for air, lubrication, and electricity; fabrication of brackets for the cold water pump and stoker engine that are new to the locomotive, a new interior smokebox front end, and superheater unit refurbishing and testing. Only then can the crew think aboutjacketing and lagging. A completion date? Being good steam men, the crew doesn’t want to speculate when that will be; the engine will be done when it is finished. Period.

Right now there is just slow, hard, tedious work. One day just last week, the team was busy on three fronts: Shane Meador, Brian Hunt, and Kevin Miller worked on the No. 2 driver axle installation (each weighs about 3 tons, while the main driver weighs about 5 tons) while David Pugh was fitting up the new Sellers non-lifting injector from the Strasburg Rail Road and Al Phillips was cleaning up the front tube sheet with a grinder. John Bohon moved drivers into place and prepped them for installation while feeding parts and tools to all three fronts.[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7343.DSC_5F00_2792.JPG" position="left" targeturl="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7343.DSC_5F00_2792.JPG"]Al Phillips prepares the front tube sheet.[/caption]Al Phillips prepares the front tube sheet. [/caption]It is the kind of work that can only be done by those who are true visionaries, who believe in the day when the blower will excite the fire, water will boil, steam pressure will rise, the sun will glisten on the black paint (yes, 4501 will return in freight livery, not passenger) and gold numerals on the tender tank, the throttle will open, the cylinders will move the drivers, and the magic will happen once more.

TVRM’s Mark Ray points out that next June 6 is the 50th anniversary of 4501’s revered first ferry move from Stearns, Ky., to Chattanooga after the man who rescued her, Paul Merriman, bought her from the Kentucky & Tennessee short line for TVRM. Perhaps a replication of that trip is in order, a chance to once more affirm Mr. Brosnan’s railroad philosophy that indeed, “it can be done.”

I thought it would be nice to take an Amtrak trip in the Midwest this fall. A train trip purely for the sake of a train trip, and go somewhere I've never been on a train before. Seems pretty simple, right? Wrong.

I'd ridden the Empire Builder (and even Hiawathas) long before I moved to Wisconsin, so there's no new mileage for me here. There are still four corridors and a few other routes out of Chicago I've never seen. But, unfortunately, lack of foresight and planning on behalf of the states supporting the corridors conspires to make them pretty much useless as connecting services.

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/3566.Amtrak-Milwaukee.jpg" position="left"] An afternoon southbound Hiawatha departs Milwaukee, bound for Chicago.[/caption]The first southbound Hiawatha departs Milwaukee a 6:15 a.m. and arrives in Chicago at 7:57 a.m. That's a much easier train trip to the Windy City than I ever had out of Toledo. (And six days a week, there are seven round trips!)

My first thought was to go to St. Louis, ride some light rail, see the Gateway Arch, and come home on Sunday. The southbound trip works out great. The first Lincoln Service departure from Chicago is at 9:25 a.m., a reasonable 1.5-hour layover from my inbound Hiawatha. The return trip, however is the weak link here.
 
[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7762.Amtrak-Porter.jpg" position="right"]Train No. 350, the first eastbound Wolverine to Pontiac and Detroit, passes Porter, Ind., and enters Amtrak-owned trackage.[/caption] The last northbound Hiawatha departs Chicago at 8:05 p.m. The 3 p.m. Lincoln Service departure from St. Louis arrives in Chicago at 8:40 p.m. Close, but no connection. The next previous departure? The Texas Eagle at 7:55 a.m., which gets me back to Chicago at 1:52 p.m. (in theory). And the two morning Lincoln Service departures leave St. Louis at 4:35 and 6:40 a.m.

So my "weekend" in St. Louis turned into a 3 p.m. arrival and an early morning departure from the hotel the next morning. Is that worth spending a couple hundred dollars on rail fare and a hotel in the city? Not hardly.

Unfortunately, the other trip options, didn't even get that far in the planning stages. The morning trains to Michigan and Quincy depart before the first Hiawatha arrives in Chicago and the morning train to Carbondale only has an 18-minute connection time. A little too tight for personal taste, and too close for Amtrak to offer it as a scheduled connection, too.

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/5661.Amtrak-Mendota.jpg" position="left"]The morning eastbound from Quincy, Ill., passes through Mendota on the way to Chicago.[/caption] So what other options are available? Well, the 8:05 a.m. departure from Milwaukee connects with the 12:50 p.m. Wolverine departure in Chicago (after an almost 3.5-hour layover), making for an 8:12 p.m. arrival in Pontiac, Mich. No thanks. The 3 p.m. Hiawatha departure from Milwaukee connects with the 5:55 p.m. train from Chicago to Quincy, Ill., that arrives at 10:23 p.m. No thanks, again. I could also depart Chicago at 4:05 p.m. and arrive in Carbondale at 9:35 p.m. on train No. 393 (or take train No. 59 and arrive at 1:21 a.m.!). Strike three.

Giving up on the idea of doing anything on the layover, I decided to see how much new mileage I could cram into a weekend trip in the Midwest. The best new mileage trip I could concoct departs Milwaukee at 6:15 a.m. on train No. 330 and arrives in Chicago in time for a 9:25 departure on train No. 303 for St. Louis. The train turns into No. 313 with a 4 p.m. departure for Kansas City and a 9:40 p.m. arrival there. The following morning, take train No. 4 at 7:43 a.m. and arrive in Chicago in time for the 5:08 p.m. Hiawatha back to Milwaukee. Two full days of train riding and 842 "new" miles covered in two days. (But with the arrival time in K.C., it's a much better trip for May or June and not October.)

[caption image="/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/7065.Amtrak-Gilman.jpg" position="right"]The evening state-supported train to Carbondale passes Gilman, Ill., in July 2011.[/caption] So after all of the schedule studying I began to wonder: Why can't the Midwest states that support rail service work better together? Why can't the first Hiawatha arrive with reasonable connections to Detroit and points in Illinois? Why can't someone travel from St. Louis to Detroit without a pre-dawn departure or a post-midnight arrival? I guess that's up to the states, in spite of the promise of one national rail operator.

Putting together the illustrations for Trains magazine’s new “Railroad Maps” publication provided a great opportunity to delve into the extremes of North America’s railroad network. 

Inside “Railroad Maps,” you’ll find maps of the highest, steepest, fastest, busiest, biggest, and snowiest lines on the continent.

To prepare this collection, we took some of your favorite illustrations from Trains magazine’s “Map of the Month” series, updated many of the maps showing today’s railroad industry, and prepared four new maps you won’t find anywhere else.

Putting together this collection yielded a few surprises — some things I thought I knew had actually changed — and reminded me again of how versatile our continent’s railroad network is. Here are some of the “extreme” statistics you’ll find in “Railroad Maps.”

North America’s biggest railroad? It’s not who you might think: If you answered Union Pacific, you’d be half-right. Union Pacific owns or controls more miles than any other U.S. railroad — 26,356 miles, as of year-end 2012. But if you add in trackage rights, UP’s total franchise of 31,868 miles is eclipsed by BNSF Railway, which has 9,266 miles of trackage rights that net it a system total of 32,514 miles.

What state has the most railroad tonnage? Wyoming may rank last in population, but this sparsely settled state generated 1 out of every 4 tons of freight originated on U.S. railroads in 2010, thanks to its concentration of low-sulfur coal mines. With 476.8 million tons originated and 17.2 million tons terminated, Wyoming’s rail activity is almost 40 percent higher than the second busiest state, Illinois, with 289 million tons originated and terminated.

Which rail lines have the highest elevation in America? We mapped the highest points on 56 historic American railroads in the era between 1930 and 1950. Not surprisingly, Denver & Rio Grande Western claims the two top spots for highest points. Marshall Pass, Colo., on the narrow-gauge network, had a top elevation of 10,856 feet, while Tennessee Pass on the standard-gauge line reaches a high point of 10,221 feet.

And what rail lines has lowest “high summit”? Illinois is known for being flat, and regional system Chicago & Eastern Illinois, which never left the prairies, had the lowest “high point,” at 759 feet in Dailey, Ill.

Where is America’s steepest grade? It’s not Saluda. Pennsylvania Railroad’s Madison Incline in Indiana, has a 5.89 percent grade, the steepest among U.S. railroads in the “classic” era of 1930-1950. Southern Railway’s Saluda Hill in North Carolina came in second, with its stretch of 5.1 percent. And of course, we’d be remiss not to bring up Chicago & Eastern Illinois once again, where the steepest grade on the system is in Spillertown, Ill., at 1.26 percent, the “gentlest” among each railroad’s steepest grade.

What is America’s busiest railroad line? It’s not a coal route. In fact, you’ll find more trains on Metro-North Railroad’s line out of Grand Central Terminal than on any other stretch of the North American rail network. Metro-North fields 614 trains each weekday between Grand Central and Mott Haven junction in the Bronx. Our trains-per-day illustrations in “Railroad Maps” show you the busiest rail lines across the country.

What is America’s fastest railroad line? The top spot goes to two stretches of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where Acela trains go 150 mph. South of New York, the trains can go up to 135 mph, the second-fastest maximum operating speed in the U.S. 

You’ll find these extremes and more in our new “Railroad Maps” publication, on sale at newsstands or available for $9.95 by clicking here: http://trn.trains.com/en/Hidden/Marketing/Articles/2013/07/P20432.aspx

Plus, if you leave a comment below, you’ll be registered to win a drawing for a free special copy of railroad maps, signed by the illustrators and editors who prepare the Map of the Month in Trains magazine: Bill Metzger, Matt Van Hattem, and Rick Johnson. Five winners will be chosen at random at the end of business on September 19, 2013. Best of luck!

[caption image="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/1643.TRN_2D00_newswire_5F00_01_5B00_2_5D00_.jpg" position="right"]Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 No. 1309 might come back to life on Western Maryland Scenic. Baldwin Locomotive Works photo / Trains collection [/caption]News that Western Maryland Scenic is interested in a Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 as a running mate for its 2-8-0 in Cumberland, Md., is the latest information that leads me to think we’re entering into a true American era of railway preservation: supersized.

This is a surprising turn given that so many large engines have gone cold over the past dozen years since the coming of new Federal Railroad Administration regulations that raised the standards on boiler integrity.  For a while, it looked as if the world might truly be inherited by the growing number of 0-4-0Ts in steam.

But Americans have always gravitated to the big and bold, and it looks like now we may see a few new locomotives that fit this bill. There’s good reason to do this: Big gets attention.

Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific knew this years ago when NS ran Class A 2-6-6-4 No. 1218 (1987-1991) and UP put 4-6-6-4 No. 3985 into excursion and display service starting in 1982. Big steam is impressive. Bigger steam is even more impressive.

Two tourist railroads run Mallets, locomotives that use their steam twice: South Dakota’s Black Hills Central and California’s Niles Canyon Railway each operate logging 2-6-6-2Ts. Black Hills needs its engine to scale a steep grade at Hill City, S.D. Niles Canyon runs its locomotive, the recipient of the annual Trains preservation award in 2009, to celebrate the logging lokies that once roamed the Golden State’s forests in search of timber.

[caption image="http://cs.trains.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-07-48/0456.JW_5F00_NewsWire_5F00_02_5B00_6_5D00_.jpg" position="left"]Little River Railroad 2-4-4-2 No. 126 went to Columbia River Belt Line, and is now under restoration in Oregon. Baldwin Locomotive Works photo / Trains collection [/caption]Don’t forget that an unusual logging Mallet, Deep River Logging Co. 2-4-4-2 No. 7 “Skookum” is coming back to life at the Oregon Coast Scenic in Garibaldi. That engine on the former Southern Pacific Tillamook Branch will be a sight to behold when it debuts, possibly as early as 2014.

Union Pacific, of course, eclipsed everyone this summer by acquiring Big Boy 4-8-8-4 No. 4014 from the Southern California Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. Its move this fall from Los Angeles to Cheyenne, dead in tow, will be a spectacle, and once its restoration is completed in a few years, it will draw a crowd of unimaginable magnitude to that UP landmark route of the Big Boys, Wyoming’s Sherman Hill.

The C&O 2-6-6-2 would be an impressive locomotive on the 18-mile run from Cumberland to Frostburg, Md., much of it on the former Western Maryland main line. The locomotive, with its 56-inch drivers, would look magnificent on the line’s 2 percent plus grades. Let’s hope that the tourist railroad and the B&O Railroad Museum, which owns the 1309, come to an agreement to put her back into operation. The 1309 would look good with a string of hoppers at the iconic Western Maryland location, Helmstetter’s Curve.

Both the Big Boy and the 1309 will take a few years to restore, but once they’re in operation, we’ll definitely be in the 21^st century age of the articulateds. 

People who fight for better passenger-train service never get combat pay, but they deserve it. 

That’s a conclusion I reached last Saturday after attending the annual meeting of the Michigan Association of Railroad Passengers (www.marp.org), which is celebrating its 40^th year. Founded by John De Lora in 1973, MARP has been on the front lines for nearly every effort to improve Amtrak service in the Wolverine State. Sometimes its members fight the big battles: saving the all-important ex-Conrail line from Kalamazoo east toward Detroit, expanding 110-mph service, pushing for more frequencies. Sometimes it’s only a skirmish: keeping a station restroom open, getting a parking lot paved. Every time, they apply pressure with expertise and dedication.

I’d been invited to speak to MARP by an old friend and a mainstay of the organization, Jim Wallington, who spent many years as a reporter for the Lansing State Journal. The association gathered in that most sacred of Michigan railroad places, the depot at Durand, historic crossroads of the Grand Trunk Western and still one of America’s truly great small-town stations.

I can’t vouch for how well my comments were received (interrupted at times by CN freights), but I hope the group enjoyed my basic message, which was that their efforts are of lasting value. The fact that the attendees included the top Michigan DOT rail official Tim Hoeffner, and a staff member from U.S. Sen. Carl Levin’s office, Melissa Horste, says something about MARP’s standing.

My comments also had a subtext: that MARP should be glad it’s in Michigan, and not my current home state of Wisconsin. Whatever passenger-train advocates must endure in Michigan, it’s nothing compared to living in the looking-glass world of the Badger State, where opponents led by Gov. Scott Walker turned a promising high-speed program on its head, and sent two perfectly good Talgo trainsets packing for greener pastures.

But that’s a topic for another day.

For now, things are looking up in Michigan, despite a current arrangement that terminates Chicago-Detroit-Pontiac trains Monday-Thursday at Jackson, where Amtrak passengers are obliged to finish their trips by bus. It’s an agonizingly bad situation, but it serves a good purpose: giving Amtrak track and signal crews a chance to begin the long-anticipated upgrade of 135 miles of main line east form Kalamazoo. A wonderful development made possible by last year’s sale of the Kalamazoo-Dearborn segment to the state by Norfolk Southern, which inherited the line from Conrail.

When completed in a couple of years, the improvements should help Michigan claim status as a showcase for Midwestern service. That’s because 95 miles of the route is already in first-class condition, thanks to Amtrak’s purchase in the 1970s of the former Michigan Central line from Kalamazoo west to Porter, Ind. That segment was quickly upgraded to a smooth 79 mph and since 2000 has added sections of 110 mph operation.

With NS’s conveyance to the state of most of the rest of the old MC, Amtrak’s Wolverine Service trains will be close to having a nearly completely rebuilt main line within Michigan. All of this will certainly give Amtrak a chance to do even more with the robust market it has along this corridor, thanks in part to the huge communities of students at a number of large universities along the line, notably Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti, and, most of all, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

At Saturday’s meeting in Durand, I got the impression that MARP members aren’t quite ready to pat themselves on the back over what’s happening in their state, but they’re allowing themselves to believe that great things are finally happening. Especially if they cast their eyes south toward Ohio, or west toward Wisconsin, where passenger trains have become anathema to significant parts of the electorate.

That’s not the case in Michigan, and for that, MARP can take a bow.

When it comes to railroads, I never met a state I didn’t like. They’re all interesting, and for you, that’s especially true of the one you call home.

Trains magazine has acknowledged as much a number of times, with special issues devoted to a handful of states that somehow seem more compelling than others. Or at least seem more compelling to the editors. I’m thinking of our first, the all-Nevada tribute so beautifully wrought in January 1978 by photographer and writer Ted Benson. Or the all-Iowa issue of April 1986 (“Ya gotta know the territory!”). Or our California blowout in June 1999. Just this past August we gave West Virginia the full-dress treatment.

I’m not lobbying for an all-Michigan issue (Editor Jim Wrinn will turn me down flat), but a recent speaking engagement led me to reflect on my own idiosyncratic home state. I say “idiosyncratic” because the confluence of geography and economics conspired to make Michigan a bit, well, “different.” With two peninsulas surrounded on three sides by water, the growth of railroads was tightly confined except for the trunk lines that snuck across the bottom of the Lower Peninsula (Michigan Central, Grand Trunk Western, Pere Marquette, and Wabash). Otherwise, for much of its history the state was known for oddballs of railroading, like logging and timber pikes, railroad carferries, big tunnel projects, and the mining roads of the U.P.

I thought a lot about this a couple of weeks ago when I attended the 12^th Michigan Railroad History Conference, a remarkably robust event held every two years in various cities around the state. The event is first-class in every way, with excellent hotel facilities, interesting speakers, trips and tours, and a program committee that works hard to make the presentations rigorous even as they’re entertaining. The group has an advisory relationship with the granddaddy of these kinds of things, the Lexington Group in Transportation History.

This year’s event held Oct. 4-6 in delightful Bay City and led by historian Mark C. Worrall, was a case in point. The lineup of presentations showed just how eclectic Michigan can be: Pere Marquette operations in the Thumb, small-scale logging and mining carferries, the relationship of foundries to railroads, the tragic derailment of a New York Central passenger train at Trenton in 1951, the Delray Connecting Railroad (a Detroit institution), interurbans of Saginaw and Bay City, and the curious world of steam dummies. 

My own program was just as Michigan-centric: a review of passenger train service between Detroit and Chicago, mostly during the 1940s and ’50s, when the Detroit Arrow, the Twilight Limited, and the Pere Marquettes held sway. I learned a lot by doing it, especially about how little PM or GTW actually cared about the Detroit-Chicago market, and how the real action centered on NYC’s battle with the Pennsylvania (via its Wabash partner). I can’t vouch for how well my presentation was received, but I enjoyed every moment I put into it.

And that’s the point of something like this, the joy of digging into your own backyard, finding something interesting, and sharing it with like-minded individuals. I have to hand it to the board of directors of the Michigan conference. Against a number of odds, I’m sure, they have managed to sustain a very enriching and entertaining series of programs every other year since the first one in 1987 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. That’s quite a track record.

If you’d like more information on the conference, check out the group’s website. And while you’re at it, I’d love to hear about other state-centric railroad history programs. I assume Michigan isn’t the only one, although I suspect these are rare. I’d love to go to such a program about Texas, or Pennsylvania, or Colorado. I could go on and on. They’re all great! Drop me an email at kkeefe@trains.com.

I have long been an advocate of teaching in the public schools all of the many ways railroading set the tone for many aspects of modern life. The concepts of time zones, the organization of big businesses, and modern diet (thanks to refrigerator cars) owe all or part of their origins to the railroad business. If you do a little study, it makes for great cocktail party trivia. Impress your friends!

Now come our friends at Johnson & Johnson, who tell me that this year marks the 125^th anniversary of an item we all have in our homes, offices, automobiles, and yes, trains. It’s the first aid kit, and according to their company historian, it owes its origins to railroading. 

The story goes that while on vacation in the late 1880s, Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson struck up a conversation with a railway surgeon on his train that was heading through the Rocky Mountains. The surgeon mentioned that railroad workers were frequently injured while laying track and that treating them was difficult due to lack of sterile medical supplies and the long distance to medical facilities.

That got Johnson to thinking, and after consulting with other railway surgeons across the country, Johnson pioneered the first commercial first aid kit, featuring supplies to treat injuries, both minor and serious. The first kits arrived on the market in, September 1888, square boxes the size of a fish tackle box, filled with sterile dressings, absorbent cotton, bandages, surgical tape,sterilization chemicals, and other supplies.

Of course, from there, Johnson began creating different varieties of first aid kits to satisfy different needs.

Margaret Gurowitz, chief historian at Johnson & Johnson, says Johnson made the trip that led to the creation of the first aid kit as a vacation to a Colorado cattle ranch. It’s quite likely that he was riding the Denver & Rio Grande, although it’s not documented.

“He was outgoing, and started talking with a fellow passenger,” Gurowitz said. Having learned about the need, Johnson wrote to other railway surgeons to get their thoughts. And not long after, the first kits were sold. Among the earliest customers were the New York Central and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western.

But this isn’t the only railroad story in the corporate history of Johnson & Johnson. The company is based in New Brunswick, N.J., because of the railroad: James Wood Johnson, one of the three founders, was riding a Pennsylvania Railroad train and when it made its stop, Johnson saw a 4-story brick building for rent. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

There are two more pieces of railroad history to put into your next party conversation.

All images courtesy of Johnson & Johnson.

Emily Ellis at work on the railroad. 

I’ll admit I wasn’t born liking trains. I didn’t grow up always wanting to take the train, and I would roll my eyes when my dad took my family chasing. To me, railroads were just a mode of transportation. They were a means to an end, which, if you asked me, was only a little more fun than a car ride because I didn’t get sick.

I can’t honestly say I knew it when I started to change. As I grew up, I began to understand that my father saw something more in trains than a way of getting from point “A” to point “B,” and that for him, the train was the vacation. Still, I didn’t grasp what it was that made him love trains as much as he did.

The year I turned 13, my parents bought a house in southern Colorado, roughly 30 miles west of Alamosa, home to the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad. As a self-impressed eighth grader in the Chicago suburbs, I did not react well. My suburban high school had built two different campuses in order to fit all 4,000 students, while the population of Alamosa is about 8,900. I was terrified that my parents would decide to move there permanently and take me with them. Realistically, they never truly had plans to move a high school senior, eighth-grader, and sixth-grader halfway across the country, but as a dramatic 13-year-old, I was convinced my life was over.

We spent that summer in Colorado, where my father worked on the railroad, and we explored the state. For one reason or another, I struggled to grasp why he loves trains to the magnitude that he does. Whenever we rode the dome cars, I enjoyed the scenery and played more than enough cards, but it never clicked. After a few weeks, I grew bored and restless. There is only so much to do as a teenager with no friends in the town you live in. I was too scared to go out and try to meet anyone my own age, and was plenty sick of hiking with my mother.

During my freshman year of high school back in Chicago, I dreaded going back to Colorado. Finally, I realized that I had a choice: I could be miserable, moping around the house all summer, or make the most of it and do something with myself. I chose the latter, and asked my dad if I could get a job on the railroad. If he could do it, so could I, and at that point, I was willing to do about anything to keep myself busy. In all honesty, it was the best choice I have ever made.

I started working that summer as a passenger car attendant, or PCA. I did everything from selling drinks and snacks to checking tickets and cleaning the occasional toilet. While many of my peers may have turned their noses up at the work I did, I loved it. I loved the people I worked with, the passengers who rode the train, and, I finally realized, the train itself.

When I returned to school after that first summer, I raved about how much I loved my job and all of Colorado until my friends were completely sick of hearing about it. While I had worked on the train and loved it, I didn’t have any idea what was in store for me in the coming years. Now having spent five summers working on the railroad, everything is different. I finally understand “foamers.”

For me, being a foamer isn’t just about the train. It means so much more, and being so young before, I was unable to understand all of it. Trains are everything – an innovative piece of technology that can carry freight and passengers alike and more. Wherever I am, when I board a train, I know I will find the best people around on board, regardless of whether they are crew or passengers. Everyone is happy, respectful, excited to be on board, and more importantly, they share a passion for trains – one that I now share too.

There is no train without a magnificent history attached to it, and although I may be too young to remember them, these histories are begging to be discovered. I have found, in my five years of working, that foamers are the voice of the trains. The people who board the Rio Grande never hesitate to share stories with the staff, and through the years, I’ve learned more about the railroad than I ever thought possible.

Even if I wasn’t born knowing everything about railroad history, I am proud to be the girl who gets excited when she gets stopped at a crossing because there is a train. I am proud of my knowledge of railroad history and desire to know everything I can. I am proud to be the only girl in my graduating class who plans to become a railroader, and honestly, I am proud to be my father’s daughter.

Railroad preservation can be a pretty thankless pursuit, especially if you try to practice it on a grand scale. Americans are oblivious to our industrial and mechanical heritage anyway, except perhaps when it comes to warplanes and warships. When you throw in the challenges of collecting and interpreting things as big and cumbersome (and expensive) as trains, you have to look pretty hard to find the necessary resources, human and otherwise.

Fortunately, for more than two decades we’ve seen the rise of an entire cohort of dedicated enthusiasts and professionals who have defied the obstacles and given us reasons to be proud. The country is richer for the gems of their efforts: the Illinois Railway Museum, Cumbres & Toltec, the B&O Railroad Museum, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, the North Carolina Transportation Museum, to name just a few.

I’ll probably ruffle some feathers when I say this, but the crown jewel is the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. I think of CSRM as our world-class national museum of railroading, our answer to the Air & Space Museum, or England’s National Railway Museum in York. Yes, CSRM is California-centric, its exhibits and collection a reflection of the Golden State. But in telling the California story, the museum immerses visitors in a universal story of railroading. Throw in its location at 125 “I” Street, beside Milepost 1 of the legendary Central Pacific, and you have an indispensable American institution.

All due credit to the taxpayers of California, the museum never would have happened without those human resources I mentioned. Fortunately CSRM attracted an especially tenacious, determined lot. Standing right at the top is Cathy Taylor, the museum’s former director and today a division chief in the California State Parks Division.

Now the railroad preservation community has recognized Cathy in a big way. At its convention October 19 in Riverside, Calif., the Association of Tourist Railroads & Railway Museums (ATRRM) honored Cathy with its first Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is richly deserved.

I’m hardly objective in this assessment. Full disclosure: Cathy and I have been friends for years, and I wrote a nominating letter to the association, recommending her for the award (Trains magazine is a longtime member of the association and one of its predecessor organizations, the Tourist Railroad Association, Inc., or TRAIN; the new ATRRM is a product of this year’s merger of TRAIN and the Association of Railway Museums).

But Cathy doesn’t need me to make her case. Her accomplishments speak for themselves. Here’s a short version of a long list: early volunteer and later administrative officer on the Sacramento Southern Railroad; program chairman for CSRM’s spectacular Railfairs of 1991 and 1999; executive director of the CSRM Foundation; a member of the TRAIN board of directors; organizer of two TRAIN conventions; a leader in the creation of the Railtown 1897 Historic Park in Jamestown, Calif.; and CSRM director from 2002 to 2007, succeeding her dear friend and colleague, the late Walter Gray.

Cathy isn’t content to be merely a white-collar professional. In those early years on the Sacramento Southern she qualified as a brakeman and fireman, learning the fine art of using a coal scoop to backfill the corners of Union Pacific 0-6-0 No. 4466’s firebox.

All this she accomplished while negotiating the swirling waters of California politics. Given the state’s problems over the past 20 years, its miraculous that Cathy and Walter and current director Paul Hammond and all their teammates have managed to protect the museum. Don’t be fooled by the massive SP 2-8-8-4 Cab Forward and those big diesels in the CSRM roundhouse: the institution is fragile. That’s especially true over the past couple of years as the museum faced new challenges to its status as a Sacramento treasure, challenges that come from interests that strike me as crass. It’s a story waiting to be told.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted that the country’s leading railroad preservation association kicked off its new Lifetime Achievement Award by honoring Cathy Taylor and, by extension, our beautiful museum on “I” Street. Her work will last for decades to come.

HINTON, W.VA. — Celebrating its 47^th consecutive year of New River Train excursions, the Collis P. Huntington Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society runs this Amtrak-sponsored consist on CSX rails between Huntington, W.Va., and Hinton, W.Va. The annual “leaf special” traverses some of West Virginia’s most scenic mainline trackage through the majestic New River Gorge.

Tracing the route of famous Chesapeake & Ohio long distance passenger trains such as the George Washington or Fast Flying Virginian, the New River Train represents the only mainline excursion train in operation across CSX’s system and the longest excursion train in terms of total passenger cars in the United States. Operating a total of four excursions on the third and fourth weekends of each October, the excursion gives a total of approximately 4,000 passengers a unique perspective of the New River Gorge, as it passes through communities so famously tied to C&O mystique of Thurmond, Prince, and Quinnimont.

Rolling downgrade through the interlocking at Cotton Hill, the westbound New River Train and its diverse consist of privately owned premium cars duck under the Route 16 overpass on the return trip to Huntington on Saturday, October 19^th, 2013. New signals are in place, evident of a pending signal suspension project on CSX's New River Subdivision.

Beyond the statistics of ridership and the detailed operating consists are the on-train stories and traditions. I rode on board an Iowa Pacific full- dome car during the second Saturday of the 2013 excursions. Provided with an all-access media ticket, I decided that rather than focusing exclusively on capturing photos throughout our daytime journey east from Huntington, I would casually browse through the passenger cars, observing the scenery and atmosphere in each car.

On board the sold out train consisting of almost 1,100 passengers and totaling an impressive 29 car consist, there was no shortage of smiling faces, amateur photographers capturing the passing scenery, and children with their hands and faces pushed against the dome glass windows.

Framed by the dome glass of the Northern Pacific Observatory, the New River Train slithers along the south banks of the New River Gorge near Ansted, W.Va during an October 2011 excursion. 

Many of the passengers, my girlfriend Madison Noble included, had never ridden a train before. The concept of walking between moving railcars and their vestibules was unimaginable and terrifying. The comprehension of having to prepare and serve several hundred dinner meals to premium guests, all while moving at 79 mph through downtown Charleston was intimidating to the on board culinary students of nearby schools. The new experiences generated life long memories, undoubtedly.

Historical society car hosts narrated the passing terrain, educating passengers on the towns and communities that once dotted the C&O mainline throughout the entire gorge. Entire towns and mining facilities have been reclaimed by Mother Nature and camouflaged by vegetation. It’s difficult to envision life and residential and commercial development in such inaccessible regions of the Mountain State. Each community and its residents were entirely dependent on passenger rail travel in the peak of C&O’s New River Coal market. In many cases, long distance passenger trains enabled miners and their families the only access to the outside world.

Today, those communities and the ostentatious passenger trains that once served them are extinct. The days of dome cars, diners, and rear end observation platform business cars are found only in history books.

Crossing from the north to the south side of the Gorge at Hawks Nest, the head end of our 29 car consist observes a permanent 10MPH slow order as we cross the New River to re-join the south main at C&O’s former MA Cabin. October 26^th, 2013. 

However, for two weeks each autumn, luxurious passenger railcars, glimmering in a variety of paint schemes and representing a plethora of fallen flag railroads return to the New River Gorge, packed with excited passengers enjoying some of West Virginia’s most unique stretch of mainline railroad. And for that, I’d like to thank each and every volunteer, employee, and the organizations involved that work together to provide West Virginia and its people with a glimpse into this history. 

Thank you to the staff at Trains Magazine for allowing me to share my experiences and images of West Virginia’s passenger railroad traditions.

Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 rounds a curve near Largo, Ind., on Oct. 27, 2013. Jim Wrinn photo 

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Riding behind Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 last Saturday from Fort Wayne to Lafayette, Ind., and then chasing the westbound train Sunday made me smile and often.

This was two beautiful fall days with a big, modern steam locomotive, running sans diesel helper on a Class I railroad with a 16-car train of lightweight passenger equipment in excellent condition and the New York Central 20^th Century Limited round-end observation car Hickory Creek bringing up the markers. The trip over the busy former Wabash was made at a 40 mph speed limit, but the route was straight and fairly flat, so the 765 didn’t break a sweat. No. 765’s caretakers, the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society, the host railroad, Norfolk Southern, and all of the 700 passengers each day and thousands more gathered trackside to witness the spectacle, must have all been pleased with the performance. If the reason for running steam on the main line today is to win friends, instill employee and corporate pride, and show off the modern railroad in the context of its past, then this was a successful outing. There’s already talk of 765 swinging across the Midwest next year. 

During the euphoria of the weekend, I realized that 2014 might be the best for steam, large and small, in the last 20 years. The reasons for this are many, but they boil down to two things: The Class I situation has stabilized with confidence in the organizations and locomotives they’re using (thus 765’s trip without diesel assist), and long brewing projects are reaching the point that when the mechanics reach for another part to hang on the engine there’s nothing else to mount.

The Class I situation is especially heartening, considering that just a few years ago insurance woes and corporate attitudes about steam left us with little on the main line.

Union Pacific though concentrating on its new prize, the magnificent behemoth of the line Big Boy No. 4014, will also be running the well known star of their fleet 4-8-4 No. 844. Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 No. 261 will show up in steam on BNSF Railway and, hopefully, Canadian Pacific. Spokane, Portland, & Seattle 4-8-4 No. 700 is working on an excursion, its first in many years.

Another locomotive legend confined to the tracks of a regional railroad in Michigan, Pere Marquette 2-8-4 No. 1225 is also back in steam and ready to roll again much to the delight of Polar Express fans and railfans abroad.

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum will outshop one of the first engines to join the original NS steam program for the first time in many years, Southern 2-8-2 No. 4501 for Norfolk Southern’s 21^st Century Steam program. Southern 2-8-0 No. 630 had done a great job for 21^st Century Steam for the last three seasons, but I suspect she’ll be the main stay on TVRM’s train and extended trips to Summerville, Ga., once big sister 4501 hits the road.

I also predict that in 2014 Norfolk & Western Class J No. 611 will move to the shop for its first ever 1,472-day inspection, work to bring it up to date, and then back out onto the main line (full disclosure here: I’m on the Fire Up 611! committee, but this statement is made without any insider knowledge; just a hunch that the big bucks will finally come through.)

Don’t forget that big Santa Fe 4-8-4 in Albuquerque, N.M., No. 2926, whose champions at the New Mexico Steam Locomotive & Railroad Historical Society are making good progress for year after next. That Boston & Maine 4-6-2 No. 3713 in Scranton will surely look good once it is completed. 

And then there are the little guys. More small but interesting engines are nearing completion than I can remember happening all at once. Among them: Chris Baldo’s unique 2-4-4-2, Deep River Logging No. 7 at Oregon Coast Scenic and the Middle Fork Climax at West Virginia’s Cass Scenic Railroad. At Mid-Continent Railway Museum, the tender is done for Chicago & North Western 4-6-0 No. 1385, while the boiler for privately-owned Saginaw Timber No. 2 recently went back on the frame. My friend in Michigan, Sara Kammeraad reminds me that Western Pacific 0-6-0 No. 165 is also progressing at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, Calif., and that the Illinois Railroad Museum’s Frisco 2-10-0 No. 1630 has passed its hydrostatic test. Steamtown is getting closer on its Baldwin Locomotive Works plant switcher, No. 26, and out in California, Sierra 2-8-0 No. 28 is coming along nicely.

2013 has been a great year for steam on the main line and on the short lines and tourist and museum railroads, but one day we all may look back at 2014 and with a smile and say that was my favorite year for steam.

Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4014 is being worked on by Union Pacific crews to ready it for a ride to Cheyenne, Wyo., in the near future. Photo by Steve Sweeney.

The Southern California Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society was the owner and custodian of Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4014 for more than 50 years until earlier this summer. That’s when the club and UP struck a deal to put the giant 4-8-8-4, one of the largest and most famous steam locomotives ever built, back in the hands of the Class I railroad for restoration and operation. That is a huge development for all of us who appreciate steam locomotives in operation, so we all owe a big thanks to the UP for stepping up, as only that company could do on such a bold, expensive, and time consuming project, to make this seemingly impossible dream come true — a UP Big Boy hasn’t steamed since 1959 and because of the sheer size, nobody every thought someone would dare to rebuild one. We also owe the club a big thank you for releasing its star from among more than a dozen pieces of rolling stock on display, including a rare UP 4-12-2 and a Southern Pacific 4-10-2. Certainly an operating Big Boy on the main line is more impressive, educational, and inspiring than one that is stuffed and mounted in the well-titled Rail Giants Train Museum at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona.

According to its own newsletter, the club swapped the Big Boy in return for two pieces of rolling stock, a former Missouri Pacific SD40-2 in operating condition and a Rock Island bay window caboose as well as a the proceeds from an excursion with the restored Big Boy at a future date. UP says the Big Boy restoration may take 5 or 6 years while the steam crew maintains and operates UP 4-8-4 No. 844 and UP 4-6-6-4 No. 3985. There’s more in the deal, the club says, but doesn’t say what that would be.

So did the club get a good deal? Did UP? It’s a valid question, and one that’s worth thought. The history of railroad companies or other operating agencies trading, leasing, or selling rolling stock with railroad clubs and museums is littered with examples of good intentions gone bad. We’ve all seen too many wide-eyed non-profit board members excited that their baby will steam again accept a token payment for its use. Even worse, in the case of leased locomotives, is when the group gets back a worn out piece of junk after the railroad is done with it.

So let’s take a look at the deal through a few lenses. First up, dollar value.

The initial place to start to analyze whether the club got a deal or a dog is scrap prices. Yes, I said, scrap prices. OK, nobody in 2013 is going to scrap a Big Boy, one of eight survivors from a class of 25 built between 1941 and 1944, or any other steam locomotive (I hope). But the lowest price of scrap is still one of the places to start when you look at the value of historic railroad equipment. According to industry sources, scrap is going for about $220 per ton. So, using that formula, a Big Boy, which weighs almost 600 tons, is worth about $132,000. The price varies according to location and market demand, so that figure can go up or down a tad.

The SD40-2 that UP is providing in operating condition is worth about $200,000 (a quarter of that if it were an inoperable hulk with a nice paint job), and the RI caboose is worth at least $10,000 based on the price of used cabooses offered from brokers. So, from a monetary standpoint, the club came out well. But we all know that’s not what this is about.

From a historic preservation angle, is a MoPac SD40-2 and a caboose from the fabled Rock a fair trade? The Los Angles County Fairgrounds display already has a UP DD40X, the largest diesel locomotive on one frame, in its collection. The SD40-2 is one of the 20^th century’s most enduring everyday workhorse freight locomotives. It’s also under represented among museums and railroad clubs. Thousands of cabooses survive nationwide in states ranging from poor to great; the Rail Giants display only includes two. But would anyone actually visit the museum to see an SD40-2? Or would anyone climb, glassy-eyed, on board the caboose. Sadly, probably not. They need to be saved, but they’re probably just too ordinary to attract a crowd.

I queried three preservation professionals to see what they thought of this deal. All three are excited that a Big Boy will return to steam. “I think this will benefit both organizations and the rail preservation movement in general. UP reaps a tremendous public relations coup — few locomotives have such a strong connection with their home roads” said Charles Fox, administrator of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. “Restoring a Big Boy to operation as part of the UP heritage program will be a phenomenal way to promote the UP brand. I think this was a gutsy and innovative move on the part of the museum as well; this allows them to acquire a classic modern-era diesel in operating condition, maximizing their appeal to younger generations and introducing them to new audiences. The fact that the locomotive will be in operable condition provides them with new opportunities in regards to excursions and outreach programs.”

Jackson McQuigg of the Atlanta History Center is a big proponent of endowments for organizations that collect objects. “Any organization which collects large objects to preserve is best advised to do so only when there’s a clear endowment strategy. If they have no endowment to support ongoing care in future years for the SD40-2 and the caboose, then they should have asked for dollars as part of the transaction.”

John Hankey, who advises railroad history groups nationwide, said a roof would be an important part of the transaction. “If UP really wanted to do the right thing (and if the chapter had perhaps been astute enough to ask), UP would have included a simple, nicely designed shed or exhibit building to house the pieces so that they don't immediately begin deteriorating.”

Endowments and roofs are critical components of any railway preservation organization in the 21^st century, and an operating Big Boy is a great thing for UP and all of us who love railroading because of what the operating engine will teach us about the past and how it will inspire others to keep the flame alive. The railroad club and its rolling stock display will continue long after the last person is left who remembers when 4014 was on exhibit there. And hopefully, that Big Boy excursion down the road will make big bucks to keep the MoPac SD40-2, RI caboose, and other valued Rail Giants artifacts painted and under a roof.

We’re on Platform 7 at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station at 8 a.m. on Sunday, Nov 3. In front of us is one of the biggest Amtrak trains I’ve ever seen: 16 cars -- four Amfleet and nine Horizon coaches plus two cafe cars and office car No. 9800 bringing up the markers. On the point are Phase III P42 Heritage unit No. 145 and P40 No. 822, properly positioned back to back. The occasion is the second of two Amtrak Autumn Express (the first ran yesterday) excursions to Harrisburg and back the long way, via Perryville, Md. and the sprawling Enola Yard, and we’ve got our tickets. 

Folks had started lining up on the concourse before eight, and Amtrak, in its wisdom, started the boarding process well ahead of the 9 a.m. departure, filling the coaches from front to back, thus ensuring that those who wanted to sit together could. We find a spot about six rows back in car No. 82772, securing a window and aisle seat together (Roy to keep tabs on the scenery, my wife Laura to tend to her knitting) on the left side of the train, the better to see the Susquehanna River in all its fall glory for the entire 68-mile trek from Perryville to Rockville, Pa. (The scenery did not disappoint.) 

We pull promptly at the schedule time and are up to track speed by the time we pass under Septa’s Airport Line just three miles out. Our car host, Jody, is a 30-year Amtrak veteran who works the long-distance train fleet desk at Amtrak’s Consolidated National Operations Center in Wilmington, Del. She and her car-host peers (also veteran Amtrak staffers in Philadelphia and Wilmington) are decked out in blue T-shirts with AMTRAK STAFF in big yellow letters on the back and first names in small, tidy script on the front. Operations Center Director Bruce Van Sant provides an entertaining and educational commentary over the entire trip.

At 10:05 a.m. we stop briefly at Perryville, MP 59.4 to pick up our NS train and engine crew for the trek up the former Pennsylvania Railroad Port Road to Harrisburg and back over freight-only trackage between Columbia and Lancaster, Pa. It’s a progressive move off four-track in the northeast quadrant of the interchange, and starting here the colors and the river view are superb. The Susquehanna River is more than a mile wide for much of our run toward Columbia, showing a deep blue-green under cloudless skies, and the warm yellow, orange and peach fall foliage is spectacular.

By comparison, the former New York Central passenger line up the east side of the Hudson is tame: Three power plants, rapids, the narrows, three short tunnels, three flumes carrying streams over the tracks so they could dump into the river without washing out the right-of-way after heavy rains. 

We’re reminded once again at CP Port, MP 39.7 from Perryville, how the PRR went to great lengths to keep passenger and freight trains apart. Here the freight-only Atglen & Susquehanna branch came in (it was abandoned in the late 1980s and is now a bike trail) from Parkesburg, where it leaves the Phila-Harrisburg passenger main, running into Enola from the South. Mile posts switch at this point to miles from Parkesburg.

At Columbia, we meet an east-bound Bakken crude oil train holding for us. He’s en route to the Delaware City Refinery south of Wilmington. Ten miles further on we cross the Susquehanna on the Shocks Mill Bridge, a stone-arch affair dating from the early 1900s with a rebuilt center section thanks to Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

Next in view is the Harrisburg skyline across the river, with the Pennsylvania Capitol Building’s dome clearly visible. About now we begin to feel peckish, and tuck into our box lunches (included in the ticket price and which Jody cheerfully hands around) of turkey hoagies, chips, a chocolate chip cookie, and an apple, thoughtfully packed in souvenir swag, an insulated lunch bag with the Amtrak Inaugural Autumn Express logo.

We thread our way between miles of waiting manifest freight trains on the west side of the storied Enola yard, where I had photographed the last of PRR steam in 1956. We emerge adjacent to the westbound departure yard, with two NS freights queued up to go, pass the eponymous Bridge View Inn, a train-watcher’s heaven at water’s edge by the Rockville Bridge, and onto the bridge itself.

We stop for ten or so minutes while Bruce tells us what to look for, upstream and down. To the north is the Dauphin Narrows, a scenic water gap with the towns of Dauphin on the eastern shore and Marysville on the west. The nineteenth-century Dauphin-to-Marysville railroad bridge was replaced by the Rockville Bridge at the turn of the 20th century; one of the remaining piers now holds a quirky 25-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty, originally constructed of Venetian blinds.

We take our photographs and return to our seats as the engineman notches out for the run through Harrisburg Station. We pass CP Rockville where the Buffalo Line comes in from the left and the site of what was, back in the day, the elegant Rockville Tower.

Norfolk Southern’s Harrisburg Intermodal facility fills the landscape east of the main for most of the five miles to the Harrisburg station. As an NS stockholder, I’m pleased to see most of the double-stack platforms with double-stacks in them. Few “voids” here. 

Ten miles more (running not on the Keystone Corridor but on parallel NS freight-only tracks) and we’re in Middletown, home of the Middletown & Hummelstown, an 11-mile short line offering common carrier freight and passenger excursions. For a few moments we’re on Amtrak’s Keystone Corridor, a joint Penn DOT-Amtrak effort, upgraded for speeds of more than 100 miles an hour and seeing 14 round trips a day between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, including the state-funded “Pennsylvanian” with through service between New York and Pittsburgh. 

Right after Middletown we’re back on NS for the freight-only, rare mileage, Royalton Branch. We get an up-close and personal view of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and shortly rejoin the Port Road at CP Shocks where we retrace our earlier route as far as Columbia, turning away from the river and onto the even rarer mileage of the NS Columbia Secondary Track over to Lancaster, 12 miles. It’s a leisurely ride passing through back yards, past small town main streets, and clicking over the turnouts to numerous small feed mills and manufacturing firms.

We rejoin the Keystone Corridor at Cork Interlocking, and after saying a fond farewell to our NS crew — the whole car applauds — we hustle back to Philadelphia, pulling in at 4:10 p.m., exactly 20 minutes ahead of the advertised.

This was a successful trip, to say the least. We’d forgotten how pleasant is just to sit there and let the scenery roll by. No destinations or meetings at the other end of the ride, no iPhones or emails, just 800 or so of new best friends for the day. And of the 224 miles traversed, 101 are on rare, freight-only mileage. We’re ready to sign up for the next outing in a heartbeat.

Autumn is special time of year for me. When I starting taking pictures in 2002, autumn’s potential for photography was apparent for me. My dad and I started a tradition by attending the Bluefield, W.Va., model train show when I was just five and continuing nine years.

There is nothing better than spending a day trackside with friends in the fall: the cool temperatures, a slight breeze, crystal clear days, and the glow of leaves never fail to disappoint. Some of my best and most memorable days trackside have been in the fall — quality of pictures taken this time of year just improves with the dramatic colors and low light.

Perhaps another reason that Autumn is so special to me is that my birthday is in late November, and especially when I was a kid, gave me another good-reason to anxiously await the season's arrival. ;-)

My Autumn 2013 travels in review:

There are only two words that come to mind when describing October: blessed and fortunate. The variety of trains and locations photographed just astounds me. I'm most thankful to my friends for making it such a special month, and one I'll never forget. I was also able to photograph several Norfolk Southern heritage units, which added even more color to the already colorful season. The Interstate and Lackawanna was no doubt the two I photographed most, as both made their rounds on parts of the former Norfolk & Western starting in late September.

To kick the month off, I made my first ever visit to the West Slope of the Pittsburgh Division in Pennsylvania. I absolutely loved my experience! I wound up shooting nearly 60 trains, and photographing the Lackawanna, Wabash, and Reading heritage units. There was nary a dull moment, and the best part was meeting new faces and making friends.

In gorgeous late evening light, No. 59T marches west, after conquering the stiff westbound climb from Altoona to Allegheny Tunnel in Gallitzin, as the train approaches the Route 53 overpass near Cresson, Pa. The locomotive has just been washed, and the golden light is really making it shine amid all the beautiful fall color that is well on its way to peak.

Only a few days later, I learn the Lackawanna unit is on the point of hotshot UPS intermodal No. 218 en-route to my area. Knowing that is a night train from pretty much Williamson, W.Va., to Lynchburg, Va., I didn't bother with it until its return on counterpart No. 217.

On Oct. 11, I embarked on a chase with a good friend to follow No. 217 with No. 1074 on the lead from Wabun, Va., to Bluefield, W.Va. The picture above depicts the long intermodal train snaking into the yard at Bluefield for a quick crew-change before blasting west toward Portsmouth, Ohio. The Lackawanna unit is still looking good, as little road-grime has affected its appearance. As we railfans like to call them, "sucker holes", definitely worked to my advantage allowing the sun to pop out to illuminate the nose of the locomotive against a darker background.

It's a super cold morning along the ex-N&W, as the intermediate signals at Ingleside, W.Va., indicate a “double clear,” with eastbound intermodal train No. 236 illuminating the structure, as the sky begins to lighten up with sunrise quickly approaching.  The train departed the yard at Bluefield just minutes before, and has about 80 miles to go before reaching its next crew change point at Roanoke.

Even though I shot the trestle at Garwood, W.Va., last fall in peak colors, the view and experience drew me back again to try and capture the spectacular spot with sun.

After several failed attempts at getting a train, I ventured back to the former Virginian Railroad on Oct. 20 (ironically the day I photographed the location one year prior), and got my wish as I passed a eastbound hill-run while driving toward Elmore Yard in Mullens, W.Va. Quickly returning to my location, I began the steep climb from the road below Garwood trestle, to the top of the hill above the tracks and tunnel.

Having just five minutes to make the usual 10-15 minute climb, I barely made it to the top with literally about 15 seconds to spare before No. U85 started across the massive 720-foot curved viaduct. I raised my camera to snap off a few images, then collapsed from exhaustion, to rest a few minutes before climbing back down. I'll never forget the effort put forth in capturing that photo; it will probably go down as being one of the more memorable experiences I've had at getting a photo.

Passing snow showers throughout the night, has left the town of Keystone, W.Va. with a thin layer of white covering trees and buildings in its wake. Soon after sunrise, eastbound No. 776 grinds upgrade through the sleeping community, with NS's Interstate heritage locomotive shoving hard on the rear of the train. Just starting into the stiff 1.4-percent ascent to Elkhorn Tunnel, the move will traverse 15 miles of grade before topping it. The climb will be a slow one, as ice and snow-slickened rail has reduced adhesion levels greatly.

Late fall splendor meets with a heavy eastbound ECP train grinding away at Elkhorn Grade, in the community of Elkhorn, W.Va., itself, with duo of ES44AC's up front, and one in DPU mode on the rear. Fall is officially coming to a close in southern West Virginia, as many trees has been stripped of their leaves, but as one can see, there is still beautiful color hanging on in places.

Conclusion:

I hope you enjoyed this blog-post, and feel free to leave your feedback in the section below. I wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving holiday that is quickly approaching, and as always, thanks for viewing!

Intermodal traffic and other freight sectors are up, but carload traffic is off, thus yielding a 2 percent railroad. A BNSF Railway intermodal train heads west out of Chicago through Western Springs, Ill., on Oct. 27, 2013. Jim Wrinn photo 

If you think the manifest freight trains you’re seeing today are less frequent and not as big as they were a few years ago, you’re right, and I can explain. We’re in what might be called a The Two-percent Economy, i.e., the gross domestic product is only growing at 2 percent a year, and rail transportation, being a derived demand (derived from the need to move something from where it is to where it needs to be), can only grow as fast as the GDP.

Seven years ago the economy was growing at a 6 percent per year clip; now it’s a third of that. Seven years ago railroad carloads (one intermodal container is a carload) were growing at the same rate, reaching an all-time high of nearly 725,000 loads per week in October 2006. That’s why you saw big, fast trains of boxcars, center-beam flats, covered hoppers, tank cars, and gons with coiled steel. 

Average per-week North American Class I rail shipments through Oct. 19 (Week 42 as the Association of American Railroads calls it) are up just 2 percent year-over-year (that is to say, compared to what they were for the first 42 weeks of 2012) to 685,000 loads. Merchandise carload commodities, those most sensitive to economic conditions, are not doing well. Fertilizer and industrial chemicals are up 2 percent, “forest products” (paper and lumber) are up 2 percent, finished metal products and ores are down 1 percent, and finished motor vehicles are up 3 percent.

Two of the rails’ biggest commodity groups in terms of sheer carload volumes, coal and agricultural products, continue to decline, but are down due to factors other than the North American economy: Low natural gas prices and Environmental Protection Agency pressure on coal-burning power plants for coal, and drought for agriculture, respectively. As a result, average year-to-date week 42 commodity carloads were exactly what they were a year ago: 375,000 units. 

True, there are some exceptions. Intermodal boxes are up 4 percent because of what railroaders call “highway conversions” — containers that were driven over-the-road from shipper to receiver are being moved on intermodal flat cars. Crude oil shipments are up 27 percent thanks to the Bakken crude oil field and other new oil discoveries. The “non-metallic minerals” commodity group is up 7 percent, mostly on so-called “frac sand” used in the hydraulic fracturing process for oil and gas drilling. How sustainable these last two are is anybody’s guess.

Unfortunately, when you’re a Class I railroad and you’re spending 15-20 percent of revenues (the Class I total capital spend is estimated at $14 billion this year) to repair, replace, and upgrade the physical plant, “anybody’s guess” won’t do. That’s why the railroads hire economists to read the tea leaves for where the economy is heading, and right now it’s heading for 2 percent growth through the end of this year and well into — if not through — 2014. 

Here are some sample data points as of the end of October. Unemployment still hovers around 7 percent, affecting discretionary purchases from cars to TVs; housing starts are flat to down, affecting lumber, roofing, furniture, etc.; jobless claims are up and non-farm payrolls down, affecting retail sales.

All of which says to me, we’re still a 2 percent economy where 93 percent of employable workers are providing all the goods and services needed by 100 percent of employable workers and their families. And when all of us — employed, not employed, and possibly soon to be unemployed — make do with less stuff, there’s less need to be moving stuff around the country by any means. And that’s one reason why non-unit trains of mixed freight are smaller and fewer. 

POMONA, Calif. – Good morning. If you’re reading this on Wednesday morning, I am probably in a hotel room putting on my well-worn steel-toed boots, orange safety vest, and lime green hard hat, or more likely, I am already dressed and out witnessing a true miracle, something those of us who love steam locomotives never expected to live to see happen: The first baby steps of a Union Pacific Big Boy steam locomotive that’s headed toward restoration. Full restoration. Given my excitement about this development as I write this Tuesday night at 35,000 feet on a US Airways A319 high over the Midwest, I suspect I will already be marveling at this spectacle taking place in the southern California sunshine. Sleep can wait. We’re waking up a Big Boy!

You may be wondering why I am so excited about an unrestored steam locomotive True, No. 4014 is not under steam today; it’s only recently been reclaimed by the Union Pacific Railroad for its heritage fleet of historic steam and diesel locomotives. But it is moving, nonetheless, inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot toward a new future. Today’s game: Leapfrog with panel track across 5,000 feet of parking lot at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. Even without a fire in the firebox, water in the glasses, and steam on the gauge, I expect this engine will begin to take on a personality as it moves. What sounds will it make? What will the rust smell like as it’s worn away? We’ll find out today!

This engine is bound for greatness as an operating locomotive. But today is about the beginning of the journey back home to Wyoming. This is that once-in-a-lifetime day when a 72-year-old steam locomotive is rescued from its museum display site of more than 50 years, moved with the love and care of those who will make her whole once again, and the relationship between man and machine develops. One day, those entrusted to this jewel of the UP, a treasure from America’s industrial past, will used gloved hands to light the oil fire, watch the steam build, pull the whistle cord, and open the throttle. Given the enormous task of this gigantic locomotive, that day is years into the future, but No. 4014’s future begins today. Wake up, Big Boy, it’s time to move. You can go home again. 

Distinguished observers like to point out that Big Boys only ever operated in revenue service on the Union Pacific in select mountain areas, mostly Utah and Wyoming. It was what they were designed to do – all they ever did. A kind of logic dictates the original routings are the only ones Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4014 will ever run again.
So when I visited Union Pacific’s steam boss, Ed Dickens, on the last leg of an official Trains trip to Los Angeles three weeks ago, I asked him, “Where can the 4014 go?”
Dickens didn’t answer my question directly. Instead he pointed me to facts:

Fact: Big Boys are more nimble than you think

All Big Boys are articulated locomotives, but were they good at turning? Kalmbach’s Locomotive Cyclopedia says the Big Boys could make 20-degree curves in terminals, without derailing. Sounds good to me. Sources are sparse for Big Boy axle loadings, but by several estimates, a Big Boy in operation put about 67,500 pounds on each axle and that’s lighter than the esteemed Allegheny-type. Again, according to the Cyclopedia, the famous (and heavier) Allegheny-type locomotives of the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Virginian had axle loadings of up to 80,000 pounds. If the Eastern coal roads could take that abuse way back when, in theory, they could have taken a Big Boy. 

Fact: Big Boys do get around

Big Boy No. 4012 is at Steamtown in Scranton, Pa. No. 4017 is in Green Bay, Wis., No. 4023 is in Omaha, Neb., and No. 4018 just moved to Frisco, Texas, after an extended stay in Dallas.

Oh, and by the way, Big Boys were born of the American Locomotive Co. in New York! New York State, that is, and specifically Schenectady, a proud manufacturing city in New York’s capital region. Schenectady is 800 miles east of Chicago and roughly 1,800 miles east of Cheyenne, Wyo. In the 1940s, the most direct route to move 25 Big Boys westward would have been over the New York Central to Chicago, then by way of Union Pacific to Wyoming.

Rail historians could give more accurate routings for Big Boy comings and goings, but it is safe to say that 70 years ago and today, the world's largest steam locomotives left no permanent damage in the East, or anywhere else.

Fact: You can jack up the tender

The myth goes that the Big Boys’ centipede tenders with their rigid wheel bases kept Big Boys from doing any serious turning in the 1940s and 1950s despite being articulated locomotives. The tenders are the same used now on Union Pacific’s Northern No. 844 and Challenger No. 3985. Ed Dickens says the tenders were designed, or at least work OK, with the tenders’ rear axles jacked, or elevated. Need more clearance? Jack-up another axle. This seems like a solution that works best at restricted speeds.

Fact: U.S. railroads are in better shape than at any time in history

Just consider: In the 1940s, Big Boys and their 16 driving wheels pounded mightily as they ran on jointed or "stick" rail that was generally lighter than the 115-to-155-pound welded rails in use throughout the United States today.

So what’s the answer? Where can Big Boy No. 4014 go when it gets fully overhauled and restored? With determination, No. 4014 will go wherever Union Pacific leadership decides to send it. AND, I learned that seeing a Big Boy in Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, or anywhere I can imagine is a dream, not a fantasy.

Big Boy No. 4014 spent her last night inside the Rail Giants Museum at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds Wednesday. Today, she begins her trip toward restoration. Jim Wrinn photo

POMONA, Calif. – Steam locomotives, whether running all out at full gait or at rest, command attention. One that is tantalizingly close to going onto the stage, even if the occasion is a trip to the restoration shop, is often a mystery. What is its personality going to be? We’re about to find out.

On Wednesday, while the UP steam crew laid panel track and prepared a way for this locomotive to walk across a parking lot and back to the national rail system, I spent time getting to know this 4-8-8-4. This is the seventh of eight preserved Big Boys that I’ve seen (the 4023 on display in Omaha, Neb., has eluded me thus far), and No. 4014, at home for one last day at the Rail Gaints Museum on the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, is set to win over a lot of hearts.

The UP steam crew has a good sense of humor as evidenced by these spray painted signs, reflecting the engine's past, future, and one-time operational home. Jim Wrinn photo

She’s no rusty hulk. Her boiler barrel is clean, and free of rust or deterioration. The glass in her indicator boards and her marker lamps give an in service look. I have no doubt that when she is restored and running on the main line again one day as a goodwill ambassador for the UP, she will truly dazzle.

No. 4014 may have been the most obscure of the preserved Big Boys – until now. Steamtown’s Big Boy in Scranton, due to its moves to Vermont and Pennsylvania, and the Museum of the American Railroad’s Big Boy in Texas, thanks to its recent move from the Dallas fairgrounds to Frisco, Texas, have sure become well known. But now there’s 4014, a locomotive that will become known to us all as the UP Big Boy.

I look forward to seeing this locomotive take its first, although short, trip toward restoration today, and I invite you to join us if you are a subscriber at www.TrainsMag.com/webcam for a live broadcast of the move.