‘Big Boy’ coming to Carbon County this summer
PHOTO COURTESY / UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD
NESQUEHONING – An American railroad icon and the largest steam train operating in the world will soon be in the anthracite region for the first time ever.
The Union Pacific Railroad is taking its Big Boy No. 4014 steam locomotive on a nationwide tour.
Part of the east coast leg of that tour will be in the anthracite coalfields. The Reading and Northern Railroad says the 4-8-8-4 locomotive, the largest steam locomotive operating in the world, will power a train from Nesquehoning to Pittston on Sunday, June 14. The trip is a special excursion to benefit the Union Pacific Railroad Museum.
“We are most flattered that Union Pacific has chosen to make Reading and Northern a part of the Big Boy’s eastern semiquincentennial tour,” Reading and Northern Senior Vice President Matt Fisher said. “This locomotive has never been on the Reading and Northern, let alone east of the Mississippi River since its construction in Schenectady, New York in the 1940’s.”
Reading and Northern Owner Andy Muller, Jr. called it “the most fantastic railfan event of the 21st Century” though also warned that his railroad police force will be out.
“People will be required to stay a minimum of 25 feet away from all railroad tracks, which will be strictly enforced,” Muller said.
The Big Boy will be in Scranton as part of the eastern leg of the nationwide tour.
It was one of 25 built to serve the railroad in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Utah in the 1940’s. The locomotives served through 1962.
Union Pacific restored the behemoth locomotive in honor of the sesquicentennial of the first transcontinental railroad in 2019.
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