"Big Boy" Rescues a diesel freight

[JTHunter]

The Union Pacific 4014 "Big Boy" pushes a stalled freight train up a hill.

https://autos.yahoo.com/watch-retired-big-boy-steam-131054335.html 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icgH_3dXdOU

(Can't get the video to "embed".)

[French G.]

I need to do something with my photos, chasing that train across Kansas in 2021 was a life highlight. Awe inspiring machinery, especially getting to stand 3 feet away as it clipped by at close to 60.

[230RN]

I love watching the rods and linkages and wheels all in coordinated motion.  Sort of like watching precision marching drills.

But wow, watching the two sets of cylinders in motion was fantastic.  And seeing the front "engine" wheel slipping but not the rear "engine's" wheels still gripping was interesting.  (9:22 ff.)

Thanks!

Terry, 230RN

[HankB]

Good to see that not only are there people who keep these running, but there are people who still know how to run them.

When I was very young (circa 1960, give or take a year or two) my father and I used to take a walk to the GTW railroad tracks half a block away from our home in the early evening to watch the passage of a passenger train hauled by a BIG steam locomotive - it must have been one of the last in service. I don't think this was a nostalgic excursion train - whatever it was, I remember my Dad called it "The Canadian Express."

I was too young to remember any details of the steam locomotive, but I do remember my bitter disappointment one day when the train came by . . . hauled by a new diesel locomotive.

The train continued to run for quite a long time afterwards, but I didn't care any more.

[230RN]

My mother and I actually rode a steam train from Grand Central Station to a town in upstate New York (and back) and except for the smell of smoke from the engine and dining in the dining car, it didn't impress me... because, after all, that was a train, and that's what trains were.  The date escapes me but it must have been when I was 8 yo or so.

I also vaguely recall a train trip to St. Petersburg in Florida and my memory tells me it was also a steam train, but this must have been ~'57 or ~'58 or so. I think by then diesels were predominant, so who knows?  That was a brain-bollixed time for me since my father had passed away and my mother had re-married and...