Growing up, James Warburton recalls his parents pointing to the No. 4420 steam engine at the Evanston courthouse and saying, “There’s your grandfather’s engine.”
Warburton, of Reno, Nevada, was back in Evanston on Thursday to hear about the Evanston Historic Preservation Commission’s efforts to restore the 4420 to full functionality.
He was surprised to hear complete strangers describing the 4420 as "Heber’s engine," just as it was known in his family.
His grandfather Heber Warburton didn’t actually own the steam engine. And he wasn’t even its only engineer. But he was the one who operated it the longest.
Warburton was only 5 when his grandfather operated 4420, and he never got to actually ride on the steam engine.
“There’s a picture of him in a book about Union Pacific, with Heber sitting in the engine,” Warburton said. “They had big coal chutes out here where there’s just track now. And there’s this picture of him having the engine filled, running the water.”
That’s the only work picture Warburton has ever seen of his grandfather.
To stand there in Evanston on Thursday, in front of his grandfather’s engine, and to have so many people remembering his grandfather …
It was a moment that made him feel a bit like royalty, and cast a new light on his grandfather’s life.
Restoration Is Feasible
Warburton said he’ll be back when the 4420 is restored and hopes to finally take a ride in it.
That hope isn’t just a pipe dream, either.
Steve Ewing, a member of the team that’s helping rebuild 4420, said the group is working with experts in train restoration, including the Federal Railroad Administration and Union Pacific’s Heritage Train Operations Manager Ed Dickens, who led the team that rebuilt Big Boy 4014 in Cheyenne.
“He (Dickens) came here to view our project and said, ‘What a great locomotive to restore,'" Ewing said. “And we were blessed with a sponsorship of travel to Cheyenne just last weekend, with an invite from Dickens and his crew, to help us with our efforts. To sit down and discuss some of the processes that go into steam engine restoration.”
Ewing said that has yielded a “bevy” of information that will be used to guide their efforts in restoring 4420. It also gave them insight into sources for the parts they’re going to need.
They have acquired a number of the big steam tubes they’re going to need, some of which are no longer made in America.
They learned of a steam engine restoration in Illinois that had purchased extra tubes, the kind that will be needed for 4420.
Then a welder came forward who agreed to shape 4420’s new tubes, in exchange for the engine’s old tubes.
That’s just one example, Ewing said, of how things keep coming together for the 4420 restoration.
Steve Ewing talks about the 4420 steam engine that is being restored in Evanston. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A group of people gather to look at 4420, a 110-year-old switch steam engine that's being restored in Evanston at the Roundhouse and Railyard. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A crane and semi flatbed were use to move 4420 back to the Evanston Roundhouse and Railyard. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The backside of steam engine 4420. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Steve Ewing points at steel tubes that were taken out of the 4420 steam engine and must be replaced with new. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Savior Of Evanston
The 4420 was manufactured 110 years ago in 1914 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Ohio. Her wheel designation, 0-6-0, means that she has three driving wheels on each side, and no smaller steering wheels at the front or back of the engine.
As a switcher, though, she could navigate sharp turns, and did so for 43 years. A switchman would ride on the front of the engine, perched on what looked like an automobile running board, to switch cars from track to track and train to train.
The switcher saved jobs in Evanston when Union Pacific decided in the late 1920s that it no longer needed to stop in Evanston anymore. Technology had improved, and trains could make it all the way to Ogden without that stop.
Knowing how this would devastate their community, Evanston residents went to Union Pacific offices in Omaha to plead with the company to change its mind.
That led Union Pacific to change Evanston’s railroad service facility into a reclamation center. They would send cars full of broken parts to the railyard for repair work. The switcher would take the cars to different areas of the yard, depending on the work required.
“That little locomotive is what provided the jobs here, and saved this town,” Ewing said. “Without that, this building wouldn’t be here, and this would be a ghost town. It was the savior of the city.”
The 4420 operated for 43 years, until 1957, when it was retired and donated to the citizens of Evanston.
Gandy Dancing
The next year, in 1958, the steam engine was moved to the courthouse, and Evanston citizens got to see a bit of what was once known as the Gandy Dance.
The slang term was used to describe the way early railroad workers used a long bar, called a gandy, to leverage rails into alignment.
They had to pull the gandy bars at the same time to get the rails neatly into place. They often chanted as they worked to get everyone into a rhythm, and the synchronized motion could look a bit like a dance. Albeit a grueling one, that made for a long day.
When 4420 was moved to the courthouse, a section crew laid three sections of track down on the street. As soon as 4420 would clear the back section, the crew would take it up to the front of the engine so that 4420 could move another 40 feet ahead.
After its courthouse stint, 4420 spent some time as a park feature in north Evanston during the 1980s. That time it was moved using a crane and a flatbed truck.
In 2021, members of the Evanston Historical Preservation Commission, who have been working to restore the Roundhouse & Railyard, decided to move 4420 back to its original home, again using a crane and flatbed truck.
“We couldn’t, in good conscience, let that beautiful machine just sit out in the sun and snow and rust away,” Evanston Historic Preservation Commission President Jim Davis said.
Second Life Could Be A Tourism Trek
The overall restoration project is going to cost around $300,000, according to Ewing and Davis.
The group is taking private donations, and doing fundraisers, to bring in money for the project. They also received a grant for the boiler restoration from the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund.
Ewing said it hasn’t been decided yet what will happen once 4420 it’s fully operational. But one scenario could be to run the engine on a section of new track laid from the Historic Evanston Roundhouse and Railyard to Almy, an old coal mining camp.
Passengers would get a boxed lunch as part of the journey, before being brought back to the roundhouse, making for a fun historical trek that would tell the story of trains in Wyoming and America.
“The old roadbeds still exist,” Ewing told Cowboy State Daily. “The rails don’t exist, but the roadbeds do. So maybe with some negotiation, we could place tracks on that.”
Another idea is to go south to the tunnels, Ewing said.
“But step by step,” he said. “The thing is, the more progress we make on this, the more success we have with this, the more enthusiasm builds, and the more possibilities occur.”
One thing that’s helping the restoration along, Ewing added, is the fact that 4420 wasn’t one of the big steam engines that pulled freight over Sherman Hill.
“It was just moving cars in the yard,” Ewing said. “So truly, by comparison, it isn’t beat up. That’s what makes it such a viable locomotive. It was just a switcher. It wasn’t out on the road at high speed, pulling huge freight.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
