Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive No. 4014 (Brian Neben, courtesy)
OVERTON – Union Pacific’s Big Boy locomotive will travel through central Nebraska later this month and stop in Overton.
“Big Boy No. 4014 will depart Cheyenne, Wyoming on Wednesday, August 28th for the Heartland of America Tour and travel through nine other states: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. The eight-week tour will conclude in late October,” Union Pacific said.
Big Boy will depart Cheyenne, Wyoming, on August 28 and travel east through Nebraska. The locomotive will depart North Platte on Sunday, September 1 and stop in Overton from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m.
It will stop near Wayside Park and the pedestrian overpass, near C St. and Highway 30.
Big Boy will then depart for Grand Island, making stops in Columbus and Omaha on Monday, September 2.
The Union Pacific Big Boy steam locomotive was built by the American Locomotive Company between 1941 and 1944, with a total of 25 units produced. They were operated exclusively by the Union Pacific Railroad. Their production cost in 1941 was around $265,000, which is about $4 million today.
The locomotive was originally intended to be called the “Wasatch” series, but was nicknamed “Big Boy” after an unknown worker scrawled the words on the front of the first locomotive in the series. No. 4014 bears the same chalk line in honor of that name.
No. 4014 was retired in December 1961 after traveling 1,031,205 miles in its 20 years of service, according to the UP Heritage website.
The locomotives were built to haul freight over the Wasatch Mountains between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyoming. In the late 1940s, they were moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, from where they hauled freight to Laramie, Wyoming.
Union Pacific’s Big Boy locomotive No. 4014 was on display for many years at the Fariplex Rail Giants Train Museum in Pomona, California until it was acquired by Union Pacific in 2013. It was restored to service and placed into excursion service in May 2019, and was based in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The locomotive was large even for its contemporaries: each was 123 feet long and weighed 1.2 million pounds. It could reach 80 miles per hour and produced about 6,290 horsepower at 41 miles per hour.
They were the only locomotives in the world to use a 4-8-8-4 arrangement, with four front wheels providing stability when entering curves, two sets of eight driving wheels each, and four wheels for the rear bogie to support the large firebox required for the massive locomotive.
The locomotive was highly regarded by its crews and was considered more reliable and “easier to operate” than other traction units, according to the book Union Pacific Volume II. Steam locomotives were gradually phased out after World War II as coal and labor became increasingly needed. Diesel-electric locomotives became more cost-effective.
