Wednesday, July 29, 2026 Big Boy #4014!!

    We had an adventure today! Big Boy #4014 was finishing his trip out to Philadelphi and back to his home in Cheyenne, Wyoming and stopped in Greeley, Colorado for a half hour. We went out there to see him. He’s the largest operational steam locomotive in the world! The combined weight of the locomotive and tender is over 1.2 million pounds, over 600 tons!

    Why did Union Pacific need this monster? Believe it or not, it was to haul California fruits and vegetables over the Wahsatch range to the rest of the country. What!??! Produce doesn’t weigh much!!??. Ah, but the refrigrator cars, or reefers, were extremely heavy because they used ammonia refrigeration systems and the refrigeration is powered from the wheels of the car, making the load look even heavier. You’ll see a few of them in Big Boys consist when he comes by. They’re bright yellow and they’re so heavy that they have three axel trucks! 

    There are lower res 720P movies at the bottom for those with low bandwidth connections. Martin actually remembered to shoot the Big Boy movies at 4K.

We’re standing between the Colorado Model Railroad Museam and the Greeley Chamber of Commerce, just north of the intersection of Tenth Street and Seventh avenue on a nice shady patio with a railing set at the safety limit from the tracks. Big Boy will be on the larger tracks nearest us. The smaller tracks couldn’t handle the weight.

This was shot starting at 1:13 PM and is a normal freight, running about 20 minutes ahead of Big Boy. Martin shot this to compare a normal freight with Big Boy.

Here’s Big Boy arriving. He stops at the Railroad Museum, but there was no shade there and the crowds made it impossible to get a good clear shot anyway. We’re more interested in getting a shot of Big Boy in motion, since #4005 is on static display at the Fourney Museum of Transportation, which we’ll get to soon for static shots.

And here’s the big moment! It is impossible to describe the noise and the ground shaking. Those driving wheels are 68” in diameter! If the four horseman of the apocalypse had arrived at the same time, you’d never notice them! Wow and WOW! The closest Martin could come up with is being in a thunderstorm with continuous close lightening strikes.

720P Big Boy arriving

720P Big Boy!