Whistle-stops across the West: Big Boy hits Hazen

The Big Boy locomotive gathered steam heading into Hazen last week in an old-fashioned display of the railroad’s role in developing the West.

Scores of people gathered near the only railroad crossing at Hazen or stopped their vehicles on both sides of U.S. Highway 50 to see world’s largest operating steam locomotive, the Union Pacific's legendary Big Boy No. 4014 that was built in the early 1940s to conquer mountains.

The railroad didn’t make a major impact in central Nevada like it did along the northern tier of the Silver State more than 100 years ago. Hazen first sprung up as a town to house laborers working on the Newlands Project, and Southern Pacific Railroad also built a large roundhouse in 1906 in the small town named after an aide to Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

Although Hazen wasn’t a whistle-stop in its five-state 2024 Westward Bound Tour from Wyoming to California, the Big Boy engine and its long line of rail cars made an hour-stop for the crew to inspect the engine and perform safety checks.

The Big Boy engine, on an average, consumes 20 to 25 gallons of oil per mile depending on the terrain and other conditions.

“The train stops every two hours, and the crew gets off the train to inspect the engine,” said UP spokesperson Robynn Tysver. “The locomotive can get very hot. That big engine is a boiler.”

Tysver said the engineers rely on a breeze to keep them cool, not an air conditioner. Daytime temperatures across the region have exceeded 100 degrees, and when the crew stopped in Roseville, California, she said temperatures hovered near 114 degrees.

A LABOR OF LOVE

Resurrecting the Big Boy has literally become a labor of love for Ed Dickens, a steam locomotive engineer and mechanic who led the restoration of the 600-ton Big Boy 4014. Based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Dickens serves as senior manager of the Union Pacific Heritage Operations.

“It was a great project. It actually began in 2011, and we had another locomotive we were looking at,” Dickens explained during a planned stop in Sparks, a day before resuming the trip across Nevada. “It had not been rebuilt in many years since it was in operation on the UP railway back in the 1950s.”

Dickens said his team rebuilt the 4014, which he called “a magnificent piece of engineering.”

“So many people for decades asked the UP when are we going to restore Big Boy. There really wasn’t an appetite to do that,” he pointed out. “It’s too big, it’s too much work. It’s heavy.”

Dickens heard the naysayers loud and clear including those who predicted rebuilding the Big Boy wasn’t possible. In 2012, however, UP announced plans to restore a Big Boy engine.

“The rail community was really excited about it, so we acquired the locomotive in 2014 and did some work on other equipment before completely disassembling the locomotive,” Dickens said.

The rebuilding of the engine took almost 30 months, but Dickens said his team finished the project a day before the engine left for the 75th anniversary to commemorate the driving of golden spike near Ogden, Utah, in 2019. On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, two locomotives — one representing the Central Pacific Railroad and the other the UP — lined up facing each other at the completion point of the completed transcontinental railroad. The ceremonial driving of the golden spike symbolized the project’s completion of proving rail service from ocean to ocean.

The achievement resulted from the Pacific Railroad Act that chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads to build a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from coast to coast. As with the building of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway in 1913, railroad construction crews encountered difficult terrain in forging ahead.

“The completion of the transcontinental railroad was nothing short of putting a man on the moon,” said Dan Thielen, administrator for the Division of Museums and History and former director of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City.

With the completion of the transcontinental railroad, Thielen said at a 2019 lecture in Fallon towns sprung up along the tracks, and families homesteaded on 160-acre tracts near the railroad. Many stops provided water for the steam locomotives that delivered commodities such as food and manufactured goods to residents. Thielen said no restrictions existed on trade from the east to west coasts.

HAZEN AND BEYOND

James Montgomery and his father Tim from Smith Valley drove 75 miles to catch a glimpse of the engine, take photos and chat with other train enthusiasts who also wanted to see the train.

“I grew up with my dad taking me to train shows and museums,” Montgomery said. “We went to museums when I was a kid.”

Montgomery said when he was younger, a Big Boy engine was on display at the Ramona, Calif., fairgrounds.

“My brother and I climbed on it and checked it out,” Montgomery added.

Big Boy No. 4014 is the only operational engine of its type. In 1941 before the start of World War II, Union Pacific had 25 Big Boys built exclusively for the railroad. Each engine measured 132 feet long and weighed about 1.2 million pounds. Even today, Montgomery was awestruck after seeing the enormous locomotive.

Tim Montgomery said his parents also took him to see the Big Boy, which was located on a remote edge of the Pomona Fairgrounds. He was just as impressed seeing the Big Boy then as an adult seeing the storied locomotive at Hazen.

Truck driver Vince Lance of Dillon, Montana, said he actually pulled a Big Boy engine years ago from Pomona for it to be rebuilt.

“I hauled the rail pads and wheels and pulled them out with an engine,” he said. “It took a long time to get them to Wyoming.”

Lance said he love the railroad and train, expressing how the Big Boy engine still brings back childhood memories.

The one-hour stop in Hazen was not only an opportunity for railroad fans to see the Big Boy but also important for Dickens and his crew to do required maintenance. Dickens said when he and his crew take the train on its various tours, they perform all the same maintenance on the train that was performed in the 1940s. He said his crew stays on top of the required maintenance to prevent the train’s parts from being too worn out.

People who saw the train cross Nevada were impressed.

“It’s a work of art on rails, an amazing piece of craftsmanship that is still capable of outworking a modern diesel or 3,” Ruth Miller said.

Chris Hayes saw the Big Boy engine between Lovelock and Winnemucca.

“I saw Big Boy today when it went through Imlay, Nevada,” Hayes said. “This beautiful train from one end to the other looked showroom. The whistle takes you back to a simpler times and the engine shows the awesome power of steam. Beautiful job by Union Pacific and thank you for sharing this work of art.”

The Big Boy engines that were build aided the war effort during World War II. The trains transported goods to the nearest sea ports and from there, ships took the supplies to either Europe or to the western Pacific.

TRIP OF A LIFETIME

Tysver, who was a passenger on the train during its Big Boy Westward Bound tour, said the train left Cheyenne on June 30 and headed toward Roseville, California, where it turned around to head eastward back to Wyoming. During the tour, the UP Museum hosted a special passenger trip as a fundraiser by allowing passengers to experience train travel.

“It’s been a trip of a lifetime,” Tysver said on an overnight stop in Sparks before she returned to her office in Omaha. “I’ve been traveling in the back in what we call the baggage car. You really get to know the crew.”

Tysver, a former reporter for The Associated Press and Omaha World-Herald, said the crew consists of a dozen employees and during the trip, she said they have grown very close.

“That sense of community on the train is incredible,” she said.

That community pride has swelled at each stop with hundreds of people visiting the train or stopping to see it along the highway. She gave one example that left the crew in awe.

“We’d be coming around a bend and out in the middle of the field would be 2,000 people with their lawn chairs,” she described.

Even in Nevada, Tysver said she saw people perched on a rock near the tracks to catch a glimpse of the Big Boy and the rail cars.

“The interest in young and old ranging in age from 2 years old to 80,” she said. “Many of them have a story or they worked for the railroad.

When the Big Boy stops in a rail town such as Sparks, Winnemucca, Carlin or Elko, Tysver said there’s a sense of connection to the railroad.

Dickens agrees.

“We travel all over the UP network,” he said. “We have a unique job of wearing many hats.”

The public relations effort has not been lost on those who saw the train.

“Props to UP for keeping her running and getting her out into the public,” Mark Silber said. “I’m sure it is expensive, but given the railroad history in the West, it is great to see this living museum rolling down the tracks.”