The pictures on this page showcase two models in my collection. Both are H/0 (1/87) scale model steam locomotives. One is a working Rivarossi model worth around £300 that I bought off Ebay years ago and has spent most of that time in a box, and the other is a £15 plastic Revell kit I made this year. In terms of price and construction they are an unlikely pairing, but in terms of subject they are the closest possible relatives. As the picture shows, they a little bit larger than the average model engine. In fact, their most distinctive feature - the double sets of driving wheels - make them look a bit like two engines joined together. So, with the help of the models let me tell the story of these giant engines; how did they come to be, when an where did they run, and where are they now?
The answer to that question takes us to across the Atlantic, and most of America, to a place called Ogden, Utah. Ogden is a medium sized city of eighty four thousand people at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, at the north end of the Great Salt Lake. Living in the shadow of Salt Lake City to the south it is not the sort of place where one would expect to find world famous feats of engineering. It is a quiet looking town, dominated by the backdrop of the towering mountains, verdant and green in the summer, snow coated in the winter. These mountains, while a magnet for skiers and outdoorsmen are also the key to the town's existence. Ogden, like so many conurbations in the western states of the United States, is a railroad town, built up in the 19th century around the advancing iron tendrils and wooden ties of the transcontinental railroad. forty miles to the north west from main street Ogden is Promontory Summit, where the western Central Pacific and eastern Union Pacific railroads met in the spring of 1869 to complete the first rail route across the United States and thus kick start a new world economic superpower the likes of which had never been seen before. Ogden was the main stop east of the meeting point, and the last post before the railroad headed either west across the deserts of Nevada or east through Utah and Nebraska. Passengers changed from Union Pacific trains to the Central Pacific or vice versa at Ogden Union Station; "You can't get anywhere without coming to Ogden." as the motto went from the town's fathers.
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We visited Promontory on the way through Utah in 2017. The railroad bypassed the historic spot in the 1904 in favour of a causeway across the salt flats and the rails were nearly all removed Now preserved as a historic site the old depot is maintained as a visitor centre and abandoned grades are still there, weaving in and out of the road to the top. Its an atmospheric place; like the Little Bighorn Battlefield or the Oregon trail it's a place where something momentous in history once took place but now it's a silent spot in the middle of waiving grass and rolling hills. The site maintains two replicas of the engines that met in the famous photographs of the golden spike ceremony. They live in a shed up a side track from the visitor centre. The two locomotives are average sized by British standards but tiny compared.to what they begat in America. Standing in the big wooden cab, looking out over the polished brass, big wheels and spindly connecting rods there s a real sense of what an adventure a train journey would have been at of time. Also though there's a real sense of how much of a quantum leap this engine was over the oxen carts of prairie wagon trains. Realistically the roughly laid tracks and twisty line meant the first transcontinental trains would have spent much of their journey chugging along at 20mph - a crawl by today's standards but a huge improvement over slumming it.on foot along the Oregon trail for months.
The grade over the Union Pacific from Ogden, along the valley of the Weber River, through Echo Canyon and over the summit on the way to Wyoming was steep; over 1% (1 in 100), going on for mile after mile. For decades after it was built in the 1870s this section was a major headache for the railroad. Heading east out of Ogden a train faced a climb of 2,500 feet in sixty five miles; in the early 20th century some of the line was eased as it was double-tracked but this was only a very small benefit. Where one locomotive might suffice to pull a train across the flat plains of Nebraska in the mountains a train might need to be double or triple headed. What was really needed was a bigger engine at the front, something with the pulling power to cope on its own, but the problem with a larger locomotive is that there is only a limited space to fit inside.
--All railways have a loading gauge; the size of the tunnels, the clearance of the station platforms and overhead wires etc, and that usually restricts the size of a power unit. The only way to make an engine massively more powerful is make it longer, but then we run into another problem Most American railroads run for hundred of thousands of miles. Easing the corners to fit a huge new locomotive would cost a fortune. The largest engine Union Pacific had built had fourteen driving wheels - seven in a row on each side - but this great rigid 4-12-2 unit was only useable on the wide open plains of Nebraska and Iowa. There would be no hope of getting such an engine around all the curves of the mountain routes.
The solution was to have two independent sets of driving wheels connected to one boiler - an articulated locomotive. Until the 1920s the idea had been best expressed by the strange looking 'Mallett' locomotives. Popular in Africa and other countries with narrow, twisty railways running through remote locations, the long engines with water tanks on front of the boiler, making them look like wheeled battleships that could not quite decide which way was forwards could put out large amounts of power while still getting through snaking lines. The problem was that all this heft came at the expense of speed. Big articulated locomotives could make it around corners but were not fleet of foot when things straightened out. In the 1900s Union Pacific had built some bizarre looking stretched Frankenstein's monster creations to tackle their mountain routes in Utah and Wyoming. These so-called "Bull-Mooses" had a double set of wheels and cylinders in a 2-8-8-0 wheel arrangement but were not speed demons, hauling full loads at a not-very-heady 12 mph.
* (2-8-8-0 being the standard designation of wheels; 2 on the front truck, two sets of eight driving wheels, and no trailing truck, so from the side this engine would have one, then four, then another four wheels)
Progress was steady however and American locomotive engineers of the 1920s and 30s, facing huge increases in freight traffic and weights over the steep inclines of their lines over the Wasatch, Cascades and Sierra Nevada out west and the Appalachians and Smokies in the East as well as got their drawing boards and set to work creating some monstrous machines. In the east the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad built a thirty eight metre long locomotive called the H8 "Allegheny". Also in the east the Norfolk & Western built the 2-8-8-2 Y3s, and upgraded version the Y6a; their huge curved boilers with the look of giant cannons. The C&O also built their own versions of this design, giving them their popular name "Chesapeake". It was traditional on the world's railways for each new wheel arrangement to gain a popular nickname; as well as Chesapeake there had already been the 'American', the classic 4-4-0 engine with great "Cow catcher" and voluminous chimney of a hundred Wild West Movies; the longer 4 6 0 "Ten Wheeler". 2 8 2 was a 'Mikado'; a 4 4 2 an 'Atlantic', the 4 6 4 a 'Pacific' and so on. Things got ever larger - a 2-8-8-4 design, the "Yellowstone" was made for several of the country's largest railroads. The very first stateside line, the Baltimore and Ohio, designated theirs the EM-1. The Northern Pacific called them Z-5s. Southern Pacific - the counterpart of the Union Pacific who built the line from Sacramento to Utah that joined at Promontory - had a version called the AC9.
Meanwhile for the Union Pacific, at the behest of company chairman William Jeffers, keen to be at te the forefront of technology, chief company designer Otto Jabelmann penned a twenty wheel 4-6-6-4 design to be built by the American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, New York state. Founded in 1901, an amalgamation of many smaller 19th century engine constructors, "Alco", along with another company, Baldwin of Pennsylvania, dominated the world of railway locomotives in the USA for the first half of the 20th century. The engine was the first 4-6-6-4, and was christened a Challenger.
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This is the grey engine, the pricey model. For such a big engine the UP Challenger is uncluttered compared to some of it's contemporaries, with a stout strength enhanced by it's clean lines. The model has a two tone paint job that appeared after the war, in the ten years of operations before the railroads of the USA were taken over by diesel traction. They proved the Jack of all trades by hauling passenger trains as well as their usual freight so a little sprucing-up with smart paint was probably deemed worthwhile, perhaps a way of sharpening up the look of the big locos for the paying public.
One hundred and five Challengers were built for UP during the late 1930s and early then 1940s, and they ran unaided all across the Union Pacific network, with one exception. With the coming of wartime freight trains became even heavier and longer, and even more important. Even this giant couldn't make it over the Wasatch hills unaided with full loads. William Jeffers again called on Otto Jabelman to design an even bigger locomotive; a 4-8-8-4. Sixteen driving wheels. Another 160,000 kilos heavier than it's cousin. Also built in New York state by Alco, it was to be called the "Wasatch" class, but according to folklore, an anonymous member of the machine shops had chalked the phrase "Big Boy" on the huge frame and the name was officially retained. The Big Boy was (and is) the longest steam locomotive ever built.
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Even the Challenger is a little overshadowed, even if on my shelf the big brother is by far the cheapest, being a plastic Revell kit. All told the model is a bit of bargain for what it offers; all the appearance of running model, and 99% of the details, without needing to fork out three figures. Yes it needed assembly and a bit of patience applying a lot of black paint, then fitting all the wheels and brushing the running gear over with silver metallic finish, but it is a small price to pay for such a neat looking end result.
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In operation the Challenger could happily zip along at 60 mph on the flat - halfway to the record speeds for the fastest trains in the 1930s, quite a feat for such a big machine. As it turned out the railroad ended up relaying and reprofiling much of their lines after all since the Challengers and Big Boys could run so much faster than previous attempts at large articulated engines the railroad eased and doubled the tracks as much as possible to speed them on their way. Twenty five Big Boys were built between 1941 and 1944 at Alco mainly for use on the stretch between Ogden and Green River, Wyoming, though after a time they would spread out a little further, across to Cheyenne WY, where the Union Pacific keeps it's steam restoration shops today. The engines never made it as far east as Omaha, Nebraska, where their designer kept his office in the railroad's headquarters. Jabelman would also would not live long to see the Big Boy in action, he died of a heart attack while on wartime business in England in 1943.
In today's money the engines cost four million dollars each. But then they were 40 metres buffer to buffer, with over a mile of water inside the boiler tubes. A boiler so large inside that the maintenance crews could almost stand up straight. They could certainly have put a few chairs inside for a unusual coffee break if they wished. Two thirds of the length was engine while one third was a tender capable of carrying twenty nine thousand kilos of coal and ninety thousand litres of water. The whole lot weighed around 540 thousand kilos. This brute could handle a full freight train solo across the mountains as planned. On paper it could pull one hundred cars - around five miles of freight - though in practice that sort of consist was not usually required. A fireman could never stoke the appetite of such large boilers for hours on end, so an archimedes-screw chute feed ran from under the coal store into the firebox. Even the firebox was about the size of a small sitting room; 14 square metres.
Because of it's size and outstanding abilities the Big Boy has gone down in popular folklore as the most powerful steam railway locomotive ever built, but that title too disputed to be conclusively awarded. Definitive facts and figures get lost and blurred with The passing of time. In the first quarter of the 20th century America was still criss-crossed by many different railroads, most of whom designed and specified their own locomotives, a veritable cornucopia of shapes and sizes, almost impossible to account for all these years later. The Allegheny has the strongest case - though it had four fewer wheels it was heavier than the Big Boy and recorded a higher tractive effort at it's wheels, so it probably deservedly takes the title of most powerful steam locomotive. Unfortunately for the Allegheny, with it's covering of pipes and other paraphernalia it wasn't much of a looker, and only two of them survive, meaning it probably gets unfairly overlooked in the popular consciousness. Certainly if you asked outside the United States to name a big steam engine, it is unlikely to be the number one choice. Even more obscure, the Norfolk and Western Y6a Chesapeake has a case too for it's abilitess; it recorded very high pulling power figures late in it's life in the 1950s.
By contrast with some types the Big Boy survived in relatively high numbers. 8 of of the 25 locomotives were preserved - a high number by any standard but certainly so for such a large lump of metal. They were undoubtedly tough creations, hauling huge loads of 3600 tonnes over the mountain tracks, and making the big contribution to the American war effort that had been the reason for their creation. When the war ended they carried on regardless well into the jet age of the 1950s, well able to match the new generation of diesel engines for power, if not sleek modern looks. Operations were efficient; pulling a full consist a Big Boy could get through a load of coal and water in two hours, but pit stop-style fill ups could replenish supplies inside ten minutes.
Surviving cine film of the engine depots looks like something out of Jurassic Park - huge metal dinosaurs belching steam and soot - giant solid columns of black belching into the air. The massed rods and cranks that transmitted the power from the massive boiler rotating slowly round as if belonging to some strange alien creature. Tiny figures in overalls occasionally peek out, less the drivers and maintenance crews than the handlers of the animals in a great circus. Given the impact the sight and sound of these machines in action must have had on those who worked on them as well as countless bystanders maybe it is no wonder so many of the machines were kept for posterity to marvel at. But then it is perplexing that none were kept in working order by the company that created them, merely preserved like giant fossils.
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Behind the smoke and thunder, big steam was a safe business too, and far more advanced than the dangerous days of the 19th century, when being a locomotive engineer was a regular dice with death.
Only one crash marred the record of the engines.when one derailed at 50 mph on points and crashed onto its side. It was repaired (and survives today in preservation) but sadly the three crew on the cavernous footplate - Driver Leo Murry, fireman Lawrence Endres and brakeman James Anderton - were all killed as the massive tender smashed the cab to pieces. The crash was not the fault of the engine - the points had been set incorrectly by a work crew.
At the turn of the 1950s nobody in America had much of a hint of how much the country would change over the next 20 years. Most people still travelled by train, and nearly all freight was hauled on the rails. Railroad's big dreams had yet to impacted by the rise of competition taking their business. The plan at Union Pacific to eventually replace the Big Boys and challengers in the late 1940 envisioned a successor powered by jet propulsion. Jets had been proven in aircraft, and seemed like a natural fit for the rails too. Like in planes the promise was a reliable and powerful source of power that could run for hours with only one major moving part. The biggest advantage of all promised to be the weight saving compared to the giant steam locomotives. What was proposed wasn't quite the same propulsion as a jet plane - this would be a gas turbine charging dynamos powering electric wheel motors, essentially a power station on wheels. Some railroads had already tried the same idea with steam turbine engines, laid out much like a regular steam locomotive, but the amount of coal they chewed through made the idea rather pointless.
Like the steam engines before them the turbines were scrapped until only two remained, neither in working order. One stands in the the depot at Ogden. The historic 19th century building has been turned into a museum and general community centre. The town still has passenger trains (the FrontRunner commuter trains) but they run, confusingly, from a new "Transit center" rather than the historic depot on main street. When we stopped it was early in the morning and the building was closed but the collection of old engines that hauled the trains that kept the place in business were outside and free to look at for a few minutes. The most powerful railway engine ever made sits quietly under a canopy, in good condition but largely unnoticed by most of the people who pass by on main street.
Until recently that would have been the end of the story. The age of excitement and giant monsters on the rails of America long passed, with only one operable engine sitting idle in a service depot in Wyoming as the rugged but identikit diesels of the modern world pass by. But, in 2014 one of the silent Big Boys was towed from it's resting place in the California state fairgrounds in the suburbs of eastern Los Angeles, by several of the modern diesels at the head of a special train. The destination of the convoy was the Union Pacific steam depot at Cheyenne, Wyoming - where Challenger 5938 sits. It will take several years, thousands of hours of work and millions of dollars of company money but a Big Boy is being brought back to life to steam again. The California engine (#4014) was chosen because it had been sat in the warm southern California climate without deteriorating too badly over the decades, but why had it taken so long for one of the giants to be restored? Perhaps public relations has something to do with it - the rail company realises that modern freight operations are as vital to the world economy as they ever were but the whole business is somewhat lacking in pizzazz.
Foreign travellers always look out for a big freight train when driving down the American highway, it's as an expected part of the landscape the same as cacti in the desert and fir trees in the forests, but the engines are all the same in most people's eyes. Bringing back an icon of world engineering naturally causes headlines, press coverage, and, these days, social media buzz. Naturally those involved and those interested will also ask: Why not? If it is possible and there is the money and skills to do it, who cares if it will purely be for show. Perhaps too it is important to restore the past to working order when all the people who once did a job are gone. The engine now under restoration is more than a mere lump of metal, it carries the spirit of it's builders and operators, and can bring back the sights and sounds of age soon to pass from living memory.
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