STRUTHERS, Ohio – The Union Pacific Railroad’s Big Boy locomotive has been barreling across the country this semiquincentennial year, wowing railroad fans and saluting the nation’s history.
The massive machine and its tender – over 130 feet long from end to end – looks like a steam engine on steroids. It’s the world’s largest operating steam locomotive, although its boiler is now fired by fuel oil instead of coal.
Mahoning Valley residents will get a rare closer look when Union Pacific No. 4014 makes a 30-minute stopover in downtown Struthers, starting at 11:30 a.m., on July 12. The city expects a huge crowd of train aficionados and others will come see it and is throwing a daylong festival to welcome them.
“It’s going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity for the city,” says Mayor Catherine Cercone Miller. “A Norfolk Southern representative told us to expect about 4,000 people.”
The city’s downtown will be shut down for the day. The free festivities will include a stage and live music.
“We’re working with JAC Live,” Miller says. “They’re providing a stage and we’re going to have a bunch of different acts.”
The festival will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The train is making one or two whistle stops per day on its journey from its Wyoming home to Philadelphia, and back. It left Cheyenne, Wyo., on May 25 and will return July 29.
In Struthers, it will stop just east of South Bridge Street, downtown.
Train lovers will travel great distances to see it. They started calling Struthers City Hall for information as soon as the stop was announced.
“We have somebody driving up from South Carolina and we’ve been getting a lot of calls from Pennsylvania because we’re the closest stop for them,” she says.
City officials were surprised when they first learned that Struthers would get a whistle stop.
“When it hit the news, my phone started blowing up and we started to get a million questions,” Miller says. The city didn’t request the stopover; it simply found itself in the right place at the right time.
“I think they just looked at the map and saw where they had to go, and we got selected for the stop,” she says.
Visitors will be able to get within 25 feet of the train in Struthers.
When the Big Boy train leaves Struthers, it will travel through Youngstown and north to Conneaut. There, it will get on the rail line that runs parallel to Lake Erie and head west.
By the Numbers
As the only remaining operable Big Boy locomotive, No. 4014 is a legend on wheels.
Union Pacific exclusively commissioned 25 Big Boys, the first of which was delivered in 1941. They were built by American Locomotive Co. of Schenectady, N.Y. Only eight of them remain.
The massive locomotives were built to haul heavy equipment in support of the war effort. They operated between Ogden, Utah, and Cheyenne, and hauled heavy freight over the steep grades of the Wasatch Mountains.
Each Big Boy is 133 feet long, weighs 1.2 million pounds and has 7,000 horsepower. Due to its great length, its wheel trucks are articulated, or hinged, so it can negotiate curves.
No. 4014 was retired in 1961 after traveling 1,031,205 miles during its years of service. Union Pacific reacquired it from a train museum in Pomona, Calif., in 2013, and relocated it to Cheyenne, where it was restored and converted to an oil-powered engine to eliminate the risk of lineside fires and to simplify fuel logistics.
It was returned to service in 2019, when it was used to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad’s completion.
Union Pacific put it on a cross-country journey this year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It completed a Wyoming to California route this spring.
Its eastern swing will go as far as Philadelphia, where it will stay for the Fourth of July celebration. Then it will begin its return trip to Wyoming, which includes the Struthers stopover.
The seven other remaining Big Boys are on public display in St. Louis, Dallas, Denver, Green Bay, Wis.; Omaha, Neb.; Scranton, Pa; and Cheyenne.
Industrial Past
While the Big Boys did their work in the Rocky Mountain region, it was at the same time that Youngstown was at its industrial peak, says William Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society.
The city’s steel workers were doing their part to support the war effort in the early 1940s.
The locomotive’s coast to coast run is a fitting salute to the region’s, and the nation’s, powerful history, Lawson says.
“It captures everybody’s imagination that a locomotive that big, while no longer [hauling freight], is still on the rails, still reminding us of our industrial past,” he says. “And steam locomotives are so much different from the diesel and electric ones that we see all the time today. It’s just amazing to watch them in action and hear those whistles and feel the power as they go by.”
Rail Museums
The Mahoning Valley Rail Heritage Museum will be among the groups represented at the Struthers event with an information booth.
The museum has a collection of steel-industry rail cars and locomotives on its property on Youngstown’s south side. The cars sit on tracks alongside the line that the Big Boy will use after it leaves Struthers.
Carl Jacobson, president of MVRHA, is excited about the visit.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity, and I hope a lot of families see it,” says the former railroad worker.
The MVRHA museum, 1340 Poland Ave., is open the second Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. until noon. It does not have a building, but visitors can check out the rolling stock and locomotives on display.
The museum has hot metal ladle cars, an ingot car, a few other steel mill cars, three locomotives and three cabooses.
The Youngstown Steel Heritage museum, 2261 Hubbard Road on the city’s east side, is not on Big Boy’s path but will be open on the day of the visit.
Train fans hungry for more steam power can stop by for a free visit from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“We will be open that day, operating our steam locomotive as part of a public open house day,” says Rick Rowlands, president. “While we won’t be able to see the Big Boy from our property, we will hear it whistling for the Hubbard Road crossing [on the city’s east side].”
The Youngstown Steel Heritage Museum is the only place in North America dedicated to the history, preservation and operation of steam power in the steel industry. Its grounds include operating steel mill steam locomotives.
Pictured at top: Union Pacific locomotive No. 4014, the only operable Big Boy still on the rails, will stop in Struthers on July 12 as part of its semiquincentennial coast to coast run. The locomotive and its tender are over 130 feet long.
