Where It All Restarted - After serving the rails for 18 years, UP 4014, one of twenty-five Big Boys ever built, was retired from service. The 1.2 million pound steam giant would not see revenue service again in its foreseeable future and was ultimately donated to the Rail & Locomotive Historical Society Southern California Chapter in 1961. It sat in the museum on the LA County Fairgrounds for the next fifty-two years, the massive giant leaving generations of children and those who descended on the fairgrounds every year in awe. Folks were told that it would never run again. Unbeknownst to anyone, the future had Big Boy in its eyes. In 2013, the Union Pacific announced their intentions to reacquire the historic masterpiece and restore it to operating condition. It would be shipped the following year from Pomona to Cheyenne, where its legacy would be reborn. The blaze from a dormant firebox would burn once again, water would vaporize into steam, and sixty years later, the Big Boy would once again return to the rails under its own power. Thousands of people from around the US (and even the world in some cases) joined together to see its maiden trek as a restored locomotive across the southwest, into southern California. The legacy of the Big Boy lives on.
A continuously growing album of photos that IMHO reveal the awesome and seldom-seen beauty of the railroad world from the dimming of day to dawn's early light! From dusk to dawn, trains roll on! (I'm still finding gems of sunset-to-sunrise surprises!)
