Notes from the 4014 chase: Utah

Visitors crowd No. 4014 while on display Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah.

OGDEN, Utah – We’re back in traditional Big Boy territory with Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 No. 4014 continuing to dazzle onlookers as it makes its way in tow to the restoration shop in Cheyenne, Wyo. The locomotive is sitting in front of Ogden Union Station today for admirers, the curious, and everyone else to marvel at. The big day is Tuesday when the engine moves east through Weber and Echo canyons and through Wahsatch, Utah, on the grade for which it was designed. If the crowds so far are any indication, the next few days will be busy with a long motorcade and thousands of spectators. Here are a few observations on what we’ve seen so far.

In Milford, Utah, a couple from southern California on their way to Las Vegas made a detour to see the locomotive. The woman had grown up in this rural town that is a crew change point on the Salt Lake City to Las Vegas route. Her dad was a UP official, and the Big Boy’s overnight pause was good enough reason to revisit her childhood.

No. 4014's train rolls through the subrubs between Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah on Sunday morning.

The journeys from Las Vegas to Milford and from Milford to Salt Lake City were ambitious 12-hour days from the start that became even longer after road crews on the two diesels were delivered to the train late. Dispatchers ran fast freights around the 25 mph hospital train on the first day north of Las Vegas and on the second day at two lonely sidings north of Delta, Utah, Jerricho and Tintic. Still, crowds packed the roads that ran trackside and waited in their small towns to see this piece of history go by. Nobody seems to mind waiting for the Big Boy to show up.

In the yard at North Salt Lake City, we had the Trains magazine live streaming Web cam running most of the day, and viewers saw a crane behind No. 4014. One excited viewer concluded the engine had derailed and that the crane was there to pick it up. Of course, that wasn’t the case – the crane was in an adjacent heavy equipment lot and was just part of the back drop.

In Salt Lake and in Ogden, UP has the luxury of being far from a main line so the diesel ahead of the steam locomotive, also No. 4014, comes off, a carpeted filler to go between the rails comes out, and suddenly the front end of No. 4014 becomes a photo opportunity for visitors.

No. 4014 meets new friends at Ogden Union Station Sunday.

UP steam boss Ed Dickens was pleased with the way No. 4014 is behaving, and he was beaming with pride about how it came around a 15 degree curve entering Ogden on Sunday. The articulated locomotive’s boiler swung out on the curve while the lead engine tracked perfectly. He says the engine took a rail kink in stride north of Las Vegas that will make for an interesting video as it was filmed using a Go-Pro camera.

Another UP steam locomotive is under restoration not far from here. On Sunday after the brief, uneventful move from Salt Lake to Ogden, I had lunch with my good friend Michael Manwiller, chief mechanical officer of the Heber Valley Railroad in Heber City, Utah. If you picked up a copy of our special magazine, “Big Boy on the road to restoration” you saw his engine, 2-8-0 No. 618, pictured as one of a large number of preserved UP steam locomotives. After being out of service since 2009, No. 618’s rebuild is nearly complete and when it returns later this summer it will forsake coal and be an oil burner.

Sunday afternoon, I took a drive up Weber canyon to check out UP freight action, and ran upon a most unexpected sight: A train at the famous Devil’s slide with a derailed boxcar mid-train. It appeared that some failure had occurred on the truck as I could see a sideframe in the ballast nearby. UP workers and managers were already on hand to rerail the car and get the mainline moving again. Isn’t it amazing the things you see when you’re out on the railroad?

Happy Monday from Big Boy country!