Big Boy – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Green Bay’s National Rail Museum

By Joe Berk

That picture above? It’s a Big Boy steam locomotive cockpit! Look at all those valves!

Green Bay, Wisconsin. Say that name, and most people think of Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers. And why not? It’s what the town is known for. But I’ll let you in on a secret: Green Bay has one of the best rail museums I’ve ever visited. I like rail museums, and if there’s one anywhere near where I’m traveling, I’ll stop. Susie and I wrapped up a trip to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and the National Rail Museum made our list. It’s easy to find, and Green Bay is a fun little town.

The National Rail Museum has a bunch of small items on display after entering the first building (track maintenance hand tools and the like). Then it’s on to a hall where the big stuff is kept. One of the first trains is General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s European train, the one he used as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. It’s big, it’s impressive, and it’s fit for a 5-star general.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower train. It’s dark green and it’s imposing.

The Eisenhower train was built by the British with a number of features to keep it low key (or so some of the signage said). The name on the locomotive and the exotic paint theme indicated otherwise.

Not very subtle, I would say. General Eisenhower used this train for getting around the European Theatre of Operations.

The Eisenhower train was built by British Railways. That, my friends, is a cool logo.

A photo of General Eisenhower leaving his train.

The National Rail Museum has one of the very few surviving Big Boy locomotives. I’ve seen three (well, actually two, but I saw one of them twice). One was at the National Steam Locomotive Museum in Scranton, and another was parked at the Pomona Fairgrounds (it’s that one I saw twice). The first time was when it went from Ogden, Utah, to Pomona under its own power. It stopped in Pomona, and it was an amazing thing to see.

Big Boy No. 4017. I wish that Halloween decoration wasn’t there. I didn’t want to risk moving it.

It’s hard to put into words just how big a Big Boy is. Photos don’t really do its size justice.

Signs at the museum told us the temperature in the engineer’s compartment was typically 93 degrees even with the windows open.

A peek into the coal tender. Big Boy locomotives consumed so much coal that a man couldn’t keep up with it, so instead of shoveling coal into the engine, the tender had a worm gear that drove it in.

A locomotive that caught my attention was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 electric locomotive. When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main tracks were only a half mile from my home. We loved watching those trains scream by, always pulled by a GG-1. They are gorgeous locomotives.

A magnificent Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 locomotive. These are beautiful machines. The GG-1 was entirely electric. They drew power from high voltage overhead wires with their pantograph.

From the engineer’s position, the view forward is through one small window. You really can’t see much of what’s ahead. That would make me nervous.

By the 1950s, passenger rail travel was losing favor with the American public. Airplanes were faster, and with the advent of the Interstate Highway System, most people drove. The railroads wanted to turn that around. One attempt involved General Motors designing an aerodynamic locomotive and less expensive rail cars. GM designed the “Aerotrain” drawing on their styling talents, but the effort flopped. I’d seen pictures of that locomotive (there were only ever two made), but I’d never seen one in person until this visit.

The General Motors Aerotrain locomotive. It was a beautiful design but a commercial flop.

The Aerotrain story is a fascinating one. This video explains it.

There are plenty of great railroad stories and more than a few great movies. You might remember the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor hit from the 1970s, Silver Streak. It you ever wondered where the last car of that famed train came to rest, wonder no more.

If you haven’t seen the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder movie of the same name, you need to. You can thank me later.

I’ve been to the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, Golden Spike National Historic Park (where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed), and now, the National Rail Museum in Green Bay. All are great stops, and all have great storyies. I once did a story on Big Boy 4014 when it was in Pomona, California. Gresh has a couple of rail blogs, too, including the Nevada Northern and the Cumbres and Toltec lines. Rail stuff is cool.

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Steamtown National Historic Site

Folks my age love steam locomotives. I think it’s because they were still pulling trains and generating revenue when I was a kid. The Lionel thing probably figures into the equation, too. Most guys my age had a Lionel train set when they were boys. I did, and I loved it. Some guys are still into it, like good buddy Steve. Anyway, the point is when I’m traveling, I never miss an opportunity to visit a railroad museum.

A few months ago when we were back east, our travels allowed us to swing by Scranton, Pennsylvania, and visit the Steamtown National Historic Site. It’s part of the US National Park network, but if you don’t have the senior discount card, don’t worry about it. Admission is free.

The tour started with a movie, and it was great. It told a lot about the early days of railroad travel in America, and it had an interesting section on mail cars. I’ll get to that in a second.

The free movie that starts every tour of the Steamtown National Historic Site.

After the movie, you follow the marked path and see several locomotives and a mail car. Some of those photos are coming up (I used my Nikon D810 and the 24-120 Nikon lens for all the photos you see here). After that, the path takes you outside again to see the roundtable. That’s what locomotive repair facilities used to rotate locomotives and put them on the right tracks. Here’s a photo of the roundtable.

A locomotive maintenance yard roundtable.

It might seem mundane, but the movie told an interesting story about this aspect of railroad history and seeing an actual mail car immediately after was a nice touch.

Another mail car photo. The trains didn’t stop to pick up the mail. Mail bags were hung in each small town, and the mail cars snatched them as the train rolled across America. Interesting stuff.

The locomotives in the maintenance shop were interesting. Photographing these would ordinarily be a challenge because of the dimly-lit buildings and the black locomotives, but the Nikon 810 and the 24-120 lens vibration reduction technology handled it well. That combo has superior low-light capabilities. All of these photos are hand-held shots with no flash.

The locomotives were huge. As a mechanical engineer, it was a real treat to see what the state of the art was a century ago.

The displays included a cutaway locomotive that showed a steam locomotive’s innards. I had studied steam generation as an undergraduate engineering student and like I said, I was a Lionel guy when I was a kid, but I had no idea. This stuff is fascinating.

There was a lot going on inside these things.

We walked around outside and I grabbed photos of some of the locomotives in the yard. This one was obviously unrestored. It was pretty cool.

The rail yard had a Reading Lines diesel electric locomotive on display, too. Most folks just call these diesels, but propulsion was actually via electric motors in the trucks (a truck is the subchassis that carries the wheels, the axles, and the electric motors). The diesel engine is used to turn a generator that provides electricity to the motors. If this sounds suspiciously like a modern hybrid automobile, it’s because it is.

A diesel electric locomotive: The worlds’ first hybrid.

As we left, it was just starting to rain. It was overcast the entire time we visited Steamtown National Historic Site. I was okay with that, because overcast days are best for good photography. I stopped to grab a few photos of the Big Boy parked at the entrance to the site.

Big Boy 4012, one of only 25 ever built.

These Big Boy locomotives are a story all by themselves. They were the largest steam locomotives ever built, designed specifically for the the Union Pacific Railroad by the American Locomotive Works. They are articulated, which means their 4-8-8-4 wheel set (4 little wheels, 8 big drive wheels, 8 more big drive wheels, and then 4 more little wheels) are hinged underneath the locomotive so the thing can negotiate curves. The Big Boys were created for the specific purpose of pulling long trains up and over the Rocky Mountains. They only made 25 of them. We had one here in my neighborhood a few years ago and we wrote about it on the blog.

Which brings me to my next point. I started this blog by saying that folks my age love steam locomotives. I guess that pertains to Gresh and me, as it seems we’ve done a number of ExNotes blogs that include railroad stuff. Here you go, boys and girls.

The California State Railroad Museum
Big Boy!
The Nevada Northern
Golden Spike National Historic Park
Going Nowhere, Slowly
Santa Rosalia’s Hotel Frances
A TT250 Ride

Pennsylvania is a beautiful state. I grew up one state over (in New Jersey), and a lot of the folks I knew in New Jersey relocated to Pennsylvania because of the more rational tax structure. There are beautiful motorcycle roads in Pennsylvania, too, once you get off the freeways and start exploring. If you make it to Scranton, the place has great restaurants, and like most east coast locales, the Italian food is the best in the world (even better than Italy, in my opinion). Try Vincenzo’s for pizza. It was awesome.

A Vincenzo’s delight. Thin crust, the right toppings, and wow, was it ever goood!

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Big Boy!

Maybe it’s a guy thing. For me, motorcycles and trains go together like coffee and a donut. There’s the obvious: The travel and adventure suggested by motorcycles and trains. There’s the subtle: The mechanical beauty, be it a locomotive or a motorcycle. There’s the analogy, one I often use for a fast motorcycle: This thing pulls like a locomotive. It’s an expression that makes no sense, considering the leisurely acceleration of a locomotive compared to even a small motorcycle (in engineering terms, you just can’t defeat f = ma). I still use that expression, though. It conveys power, an attribute I apply to my motorcycles.

Like a lot of guys, I grew up in the Lionel era, dividing my drooling between things like the maroon Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 locomotives that ran by our place and a variety of British vertical twins (all of which I knew had to pull, you know, like a locomotive).

I had lunch one day a few years ago with the guys at our local BMW dealership (I don’t own a BMW, but they let me hang around). One of the boys was pumped because he had seen Big Boy at the Pomona Fairgrounds earlier. Only half-listening to the conversation, I thought he was talking about a hamburger, and then I realized it was a steam locomotive. My Lionel antenna immediately went up and like everyone else at the table, I started paying attention. To cut to the chase, we decided to visit Big Boy after our lunch that afternoon.

As you can see from the photo, luck was with us. We had a great lunch and then we snuck into the Pomona fairgrounds to see Big Boy. I grabbed all of these photos with my iPhone. They would have been better if I had my Nikon, but you go to war with the army you have, and all I had was a phone.

I didn’t know really anything about the Big Boy locomotives, so when I got home I Googled it. These locomotives, and 4014 in particular, have a fascinating story. They are the largest and probably the most famous steam locomotives ever manufactured. Old 4014 has been restored to operating condition by Union Pacific’s Heritage Fleet operation in Cheyenne, Wyoming (the photos you’re seeing here are before the restoration). As part of the restoration, 4014 was converted to use fuel oil instead of coal for the boiler. It was an obvious move. I mean, where do you go to buy coal these days?

Only 25 Big Boys were ever built, and they all went to the Union Pacific Railroad. They were manufactured by the American Locomotive Company in the early 1940s. Their primary purpose was to pull long and heavy trains (up to 4,040 tons) through the Wasatch Mountains and the main rail lines between Ogden and Cheyenne. They were designed for 80 mph, but 60 mph was their normal cruising speed. Big Boys produced 6000 horsepower and God only knows how much torque. They were 132 long (including the tender) and they weighed 1.2 million pounds. The tender could carry 24,000 gallons of water and 28 tons of coal. The locomotive is articulated (it’s so long that the wheels are hinged and can turn with respect to each other to get through curves). Old 4014 was first delivered to the Union Pacific in 1941 and retired in 1961, and during that period, it traveled over a million miles.

Very cool stuff, folks, made all the more interesting by the fact that No. 4014 finished its restoration in 2019 and entered service for special runs. It would sure be cool to take a trip on one of those special runs. That would be a real adventure.

More railroad posts? Hey, take a look at these:

The Nevada Northern: It’s Worth a Trip To Ely
Golden Spike National Historic Park
A TT250 Ride