Union Pacific Railroad’s famed Big Boy 4014, the largest steam locomotive ever built, will again head out on a summer tour in 2024.
The train will leave Cheyenne on June 30 en route to Roseville, California, where it will stop from July 12-13 as part of a public display stop. The second scheduled display will be in Ogden, Utah, from July 20-21.
The Big Boy will return to Cheyenne at the end of July.
Along the way, railfans from all over the Western United States are expected to crowd around local whistle-stops as Big Boy rolls through dozens towns, cities and communities in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. UP reports other stops will be announced closer to the tour’s start date.
The train’s contents, also known as consist, will include an assortment of railcars, allowing viewers to get an idea of what the Big Boy looked like when pulling freight back in its glory days, the 1940s.
Boise, Idaho, and Portland, Oregon, were initially slated to be on Big Boy’s “Westward Bound” tour, but the network capacity in the northern corridor couldn’t accommodate the world’s largest operating steam locomotive, UP said in its tour announcement this week.
There will be a second Big Boy tour in the fall with stops in Texas, Arkansas, Kansas and Illinois, among other states, UP announced. More information will be released later in the spring.
Big Boy 4014 during a stop in Houston, Texas, in 2021. (Getty Images) 
Big Boy 4014 during a stop in Houston, Texas, in 2021. (Getty Images) 
A huge crowd turned out to see Big Boy 4014 when it pulled into the station in Houston, Texas, in summer 2021. (Getty Images)
Importance Of The Big Boy
Nebraska railroad enthusiast Oliver Brehm, who runs an Instagram account celebrating locomotives, told Cowboy State Daily that seeing the Big Boy 4014 in person is an awe-inspiring experience.
“It’s a living, breathing piece of history that you can’t have experienced anywhere else,” Brehm said. “In terms of steam locomotives in the U.S., there’s only a couple hundred that run, and each of them is one-of-a-kind.”
The fact that the Big Boy is more than 80 years old but can still travel across multiple states is a testament to the hard work done by UP engineer Ed Dickens and his team to restore the locomotive to its former glory.
Brehm has seen the Big Boy every time it has been on the rails since 2019, and he recommends anyone who sees it to put down their cameras for a moment and take in what an awesome piece of machinery the train is.
“It’s hard to believe that the entire thing was designed on paper and pencil in the 1940s,” Brehm said. “The basic idea of a steam locomotive is the closest thing I’d say humans have gotten to replicating life. It’s a machine that requires so much care and attention, it’s almost like caring for an animal or another person.”
Still One Beast Of A Machine
And even decades removed from heavy service, Big Boy 4014 can still work, as seen during a break in its rail tour last summer, when the locomotive used its muscle to rescue a stuck freight train near Omaha, Nebraska.
Big Boy’s 7,000 horsepower was just the ticket June 29, 2023, when a freight train became bogged down heading west over a feature called Blair Hill.
Having completed its schedule of being on display at the College World Series, Union Pacific’s Big Boy was ready to return to its home base in Cheyenne, but was close enough to answer the freight train’s call for assistance.
“A locomotive that was experiencing a mechanical issue got a little help from Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 steam locomotive last month,” Union Pacific said in a statement to Cowboy State Daily at the time. “Big Boy hooked on and pushed (another) Union Pacific train for about 20 minutes on June 29, helping the train clear a steep hill.”
The rescue was captured on video by Brehm, and in just over 12 minutes you can watch Big Boy 4014 creep up behind the freight train, hook on, then power up as it begins to push.
Gleaming black and looking sleek, Big Boy was actually working for the first time in more than six decades, and it appears the engineers were having as much fun as those looking on.
History Of The Big Boy
Big Boy 4014 is one of 25 Big Boys built exclusively for UP, according to the company. This particular one was delivered to the company in December 1941.
The locomotives were 132 feet long, longer than two city buses, and weighed in at 1.2 million pounds. They normally operated between Ogden and Cheyenne.
The 4014 was retired in December 1961 after traveling more than 1 million miles during its 20 years of service. In 2013, UP reacquired the locomotive from a train museum in California with the intent to restore it at the UP facility in Cheyenne.
Over a three-year period from 2016-2019, Dickens and his team did just that. They finished the restoration in time for the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad’s completion.
Seven Big Boys are on public display across the country, including one at Holliday Park in Cheyenne, but 4014 is the only one still operating.
Contact Ellen Fike at ellen@cowboystatedaily.com
Ellen Fike can be reached at ellen@cowboystatedaily.com.
