Union Pacific Big Boy

The Union Pacific Big Boy is a type of simple articulated 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive manufactured by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) between 1941 and 1944 and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad in revenue service until 1962.

The 25 Big Boy locomotives were built to haul freight over the Wasatch Range between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyoming. In the late 1940s, they were reassigned to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they hauled freight over Sherman Hill to Laramie, Wyoming. They were the only locomotives to use a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement: four-wheel leading truck for stability entering curves, two sets of eight driving wheels and a four-wheel trailing truck to support the large firebox.

Today, eight Big Boys survive, with most on static display at museums across the United States. One of them, No. 4014, was re-acquired by Union Pacific, and between 2014 and 2019 was rebuilt to operating condition for the 150th anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad. It thus regained the title as the largest and most powerful operating steam locomotive in the world.

Design
In 1936, Union Pacific introduced the Challenger-type (4-6-6-4) locomotives on its main line over the Wasatch Range between Green River and Ogden. For most of the route, the maximum grade is 0.82% in either direction, but the climb eastward from Ogden, into the Wasatch Range, reached 1.14%. Hauling a 3,600 ST freight train demanded double heading and helper operations, which slowed service. Union Pacific therefore decided to design a new locomotive that could handle the run by itself: faster and more powerful than the compound 2-8-8-0s that UP tried after World War I, able to pull long trains at a sustained speed of 60 mph once past mountain grades.

A Union Pacific design team led by Otto Jabelmann, the head of the Research and Mechanical Standards section of the Union Pacific's Mechanical Department, worked with ALCO (the American Locomotive Company) to re-examine their Challenger locomotives. The team found that the railroad's goals could be achieved by enlarging the Challenger firebox to about 235 x (about 150 sqft), increasing boiler pressure to 300 psi, adding four driving wheels, and reducing the size of the driving wheels from 69 to 68 in. The new locomotive was carefully designed not to exceed an axle loading of 67,800 lb, and achieved the maximum possible starting tractive effort with a factor of adhesion of 4.0. It was designed to travel smoothly and safely at 80 mph.

To achieve these new engineering goals, the Challenger locomotive was "comprehensively redesigned from first principles", wrote locomotive historian Tom Morrison. The overall design simplified some aspects of previous locomotive designs and added complexity elsewhere. Compounding, booster, and feed water heaters were eliminated, as were Baker valve gear and limited cut-off. But the "proliferation of valves and gauges on the backhead showed that running a Big Boy was an altogether more complicated and demanding task for the crew than running previous existing locomotives", Morrison wrote.

The 4-8-8-4 class series, originally rumored to be called the "Wasatch", after the Wasatch Mountains, acquired its nickname after an unknown ALCO worker scrawled "Big Boy" in chalk on the front of No. 4000's smokebox door, then under construction as the first of its class.

The Big Boys were articulated, like the Mallet locomotive design, although lacking the compounding of the Mallet. They were built with a wide margin of reliability and safety, and normally operated well below 60 mph in freight service. Peak drawbar horsepower was reached at about 41 mph. The maximum drawbar pull measured during 1943 tests was 138,200 lbf while starting a train.

The Big Boy has the longest engine body of any reciprocating steam locomotive, longer than two 40-foot buses. They were also the heaviest reciprocating steam locomotives ever built; the combined weight of the 772,250 lb engine and 436,500 lb tender outweighed a Boeing 747. There was some speculation that the first series of Chesapeake and Ohio 2-6-6-6 H-8 “Allegheny” locomotives, built by the Lima Locomotive Works in 1941, may have weighed as much as 778,200 lb, exceeding the Big Boys, but subsequent re-weighs of early-production H-8s, under close scrutiny by the builder and the railroad, found them to be about half a ton less than 772,250 lb.

A few experiments were carried out on the Big Boys during their years in revenue service. One experiment saw the conversion of No. 4005 to oil fuel in 1946. Unlike a similar effort with the Challengers, the conversion failed due to uneven heating in the Big Boy's large, single-burner firebox. The locomotive was converted back to coal in 1948. (Decades later, No. 4014 would be successfully converted to oil during its restoration. ) Another experiment saw No. 4007 being modified with a single stack in October 1948. The results were unsatisfactory, and the locomotive was reverted to double stack after testing. One final short-term experiment was the fitting of smoke deflectors on locomotive 4019, similar to those found on the railroad's FEF Series, as well as some of their Challengers. These were later removed, as the Big Boys' nozzle and blower in the smoke box could blow smoke high enough to keep engineers’ lines of sight clear.

Construction
The American Locomotive Company manufactured 25 Big Boy locomotives for Union Pacific: 20 in 1941 and five in 1944. Along with the Challengers, the Big Boys arrived on the scene just as traffic was surging in preparation for American participation in World War II.

Operation
The Big Boy locomotives had large grates to burn the low-quality bituminous coal supplied by Union Pacific-owned mines in Wyoming. Coal was carried from the tender to the firebox by a Standard Stoker Company type MB automatic stoker that could supply slightly over 12+1/2 ST per hour. Water to the boiler was furnished by a Nathan type 4000C Automatic Restarting injector rated for 12,500 gallons per hour on the right side and an Elesco T.P. 502 exhaust steam injector rated for 14,050 gallons per hour on the left side.

Upon their arrival on Union Pacific property in 1941, the Big Boys were assigned to the Utah Division's First Sub, between Ogden and Green River, which included the 1.14% grade for which they were designed. From February 1943 to November of the same year, three Big Boys were assigned to the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Line and ran between Ogden and Milford, Utah. In 1944, with the arrival of additional Challengers and the second order of Big Boys, their operating territory was expanded east from Green River to Cheyenne over the Wyoming Division's Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Subs. Beginning in 1948, with Challenger locomotives taking over the bulk of service between Ogden and Green River, the Big Boys saw only occasional service on the Utah Division, while their operating territory was expanded to include the line south from Cheyenne to Denver. Between 1950 and 1957, they were occasionally assigned to handle trains east of Cheyenne to North Platte over the Nebraska Division's Third Sub. In the final years of steam on the UP, where the locomotives were only fired up to help with the fall rush traffic, the Big Boys saw service only between Cheyenne and Laramie.

In April 1943, UP borrowed a dynamometer car from AT&SF to evaluate Big Boy performance. Several test runs were made on the Evanston Subdivision from Ogden to Evanston (76 miles), and it was found that a Big Boy could consume 11 tons of coal and 12,000 gallons of water an hour operating at full throttle, producing 6,290 drawbar horsepower at 41.4 mph. Designed to haul 3,600 tons up the 1.14% ruling gradient over this subdivision, the tests demonstrated that a Big Boy could handle 4,200 tons, running at an average speed of 18 to 20 mph between those two division points.

The locomotives were held in high regard by crews, who found them sure-footed and more “user friendly” than other motive power. They were capable machines, and their rated hauling tonnage was increased several times over the years (see section on tonnage ratings).

Postwar increases in the price of coal and labor, along with the advent of efficient, cost-effective diesel-electric power, spelled the end of their operational lives. They were among the last steam locomotives withdrawn from service on the Union Pacific. The last revenue train hauled by a Big Boy ended its run early in the morning on July 21, 1959. Most were stored in operational condition until 1961; four remained in operational condition at Green River, Wyoming, until 1962. Their duties were assumed by diesel locomotives and gas turbine-electric locomotives.

In 2019, Union Pacific completed the restoration of No. 4014 and placed it in excursion service. The locomotive was sent on a tour in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the completion of the First transcontinental railroad.

Tonnage ratings over principal operating territories (1946-1959)
Most grades on Union Pacific's Overland Route were no steeper than 0.82%. So for a majority of the route, Big Boys could handle trains of roughly 6,000 tons in either direction, limited only by the length of sidings and the locomotives' capacity to recharge the train's air brake system. The two exceptions were the 1.14% eastbound gradient between Ogden and Evanston and the 1.55% westbound gradient between Cheyenne and Sherman Hill. In 1953, the latter grade was alleviated by the opening of Track 3 via Harriman, whose 0.82% grade theoretically allowed a Big Boy to haul a 6,000-ton train unassisted the entire 993 mi miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Ogden.

No. 4005 accident
On April 27, 1953, No. 4005 was pulling a freight train through southern Wyoming when it jumped a switch track at 50 mph, throwing the engine onto its left side and derailing its tender and the first 18 freight cars of its 62-car train. The engineer and fireman were killed on impact; the brakeman died of severe burns in a hospital a few days later. The tender destroyed the cab of the locomotive, and the loads from the 18 derailed cars were scattered. The locomotive was repaired by Union Pacific at its Cheyenne facility and returned to service until 1962.

Preservation
Most of the 25 Big Boys were scrapped, but seven remain on static display—two indoors and five outdoors, under the elements—and an eighth, Union Pacific 4014, was rebuilt to operating condition by Union Pacific's steam program.