Train enthusiasts in eastern Wyoming and Nebraska will have a chance next month to get up close and personal with a living, breathing behemoth of a legend.
“Big Boy” 4014, the only one of the massive 1.2 million-pound steam locomotives still in operation, departs the Cheyenne rail yard June 7 for a jaunt across Wyoming and Nebraska as part of its “Home Run Express” tour.
It’ll chug its way into Omaha, where “it’ll be on display during the College World Series,” said Union Pacific Railroad spokesman Mike Jaxion.
Union Pacific’s Big Boys
Twenty-five of the massive “Big Boy” engines were built in the 1940s for Union Pacific.
At 132 feet long and weighing in at 600 tons, the railroad workhorses operated primarily between Cheyenne and Ogden, Utah. For 20 years, beginning in the early 1940s, these steam engines dominated the railway across southern Wyoming until they were retired in the early 1960s.
Jaxion told Cowboy State Daily that Big Boy 4014 is possibly the most public example of the corporation’s heritage.
“Union Pacific has more than 160 years of history, dating back to the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad back in 1869,” he said. “And it’s something that we like to share with the public just to remind people where we came from, and it also allows us to highlight the progress that (we’ve made with) our current locomotive technology.”
Big Boy 4014
Steam engines were the most powerful and prevalent power generators for factories, ships and trains between the mid-18th through the 19th centuries because of their reliability and longevity. But Jaxion explained that after World War II, steam technology started to fall by the wayside.
“Diesel technology was so much more efficient, so much safer, that once the war effort was over, and the British and the American industrial economy switched over from making tanks and jeeps and those types of things, diesel locomotives became more and more prevalent,” said Jaxion.
Big Boy No. 4014 was one of 25 large steam-powered locomotives built for Union Pacific designed to pull long, fast freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and Sherman Hill in Wyoming. Delivered in December 1941, the train logged more than 1 million miles in its two decades in service and was retired in December 1961.
For the next 60 years, the massive locomotive rested at the RailGiants Museum in Pomona, California. But in 2013, UP brought the engine back to Cheyenne to begin a multi-year restoration process.
“Big Boy had built a legend because it was largest steam locomotive that Union Pacific ever operated,” said Jaxion. “People keep asking us if we could ever restore a Big Boy, so we said, ‘Well, let's do it.’”
After a six-year painstaking restoration, Big Boy 4014 returned to service in May 2019, just in time to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. It joined its little brother, Engine 844, in commemorating that historic event.
“We call 844 the ‘living legend,’ because it's the only steam locomotive that has never been retired,” said Jaxion. “When we phased it out, 844 went over to what they called ‘special service,’ we just pull it out every so often. We want to keep this in operation because it really speaks to Union Pacific’s legacy.”
Big Boy 4004, one of 25 of the giant 1.2 million-pound locomotives built in the early 1940s, is on display in Holiday Park in Cheyenne. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily) 
Big Boy 4004 at Holiday Park in Cheyenne. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily)
Wyoming Is Home To Multiple Big Boys
There are seven Big Boys on public display in various cities around the country, including St. Louis, Dallas, Omaha, Denver, Scranton, Pennsylvania and Green Bay, Wisconsin.
There's even one on display in Cheyenne — Big Boy 4004 — which draws visitors every day to Holiday Park.
But Jaxion pointed out that both of UP's steam engines that are still in operation – 4014 and 844 — call Wyoming home.
“Our steam locomotive operations are concentrated in the Cheyenne shop near the old Depot Museum, where we store and maintain the steam locomotives,” he said. “When those steam locomotives were in use, they were kind of workhorses, but now they're more the company’s showpiece. They're kind of our goodwill ambassadors.”
But Jaxion explained that although the two operational steam engine trains are housed in Cheyenne, that doesn’t mean they are available to the public.
That’s because “844 and 4014 are stored inside our steam locomotive facility, which was never designed to be a public facility,” he said. “It's actually inside an active rail yard. So unfortunately, people can't actually view these locomotives, except when we take them out for people to see.”
Big Boy 4014's Home Run Express Tour route. (Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad) 
How the Big Boy 4014 stacks up to other large vehicles. (Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad) 
Big Boy 4014 pulls through Cheyenne. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily)
Big Boy’s Home Run Express Tour
That opportunity is coming up in just over a week, when Big Boy 4014 will be back riding the rails beginning June 7, on what UP is calling its Home Run Express. The giant steam locomotive will make several stops in southeast Wyoming and across southern Nebraska on its way to the College World Series in Omaha.
“So, if people are coming to those games, they can see it,” said Jaxion. “And there is an excellent chance that TV broadcasts might catch a glimpse of it during the during the series, also.”
After the College World Series wraps up, Big Boy will steam its way back to Cheyenne, arriving home July 3, making nearly a dozen stops along the way.
“Everybody wants to see the Big Boy come to their community,” said Jaxion. “So we share when we can.”
