Union Pacific sends Big Boy on first coast-to-coast steam tour

Union Pacific is putting Big Boy No. 4014 on the road as the centerpiece of its first coast-to-coast steam tour, a mile-by-mile showpiece built around the only operational Big Boy locomotive in the world. The 133-foot engine, which weighs about 1.2 million pounds, is the lone survivor still moving under its own power from the 25 Big Boys originally built for Union Pacific.

Delivered in December 1941 to support the war effort, No. 4014 was restored over several years and returned to service in May 2019 for the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion. Union Pacific is now using it to mark America250, the nationwide commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence led by the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which Congress created in 2016.

The tour began its western leg on March 29 from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and ended April 24 back in Cheyenne after stops that included public display days in Roseville, California, and Ogden, Utah. The eastern leg began May 25 from Cheyenne and is set to carry the locomotive onto Norfolk Southern tracks for the first time, with more than 50 whistle-stops in 10 states, major public display events in eight cities and a Fourth of July celebration in Philadelphia.

The locomotive was built in Schenectady, New York, and this is the first time it has steamed across the Mississippi River and into the Ohio Valley since it was built. First-time appearances in Indiana, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania extend the tour into new states.

The railroad traces its own origins to 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act, and it points to Central Pacific construction at Sacramento’s Milepost 0 in 1863 as the starting point for the 2026 journey. Alongside No. 4014, Union Pacific is also running commemorative locomotive No. 1776, carrying the America250 commission emblem.