The Thrill of Operating a Steam Locomotive: A Rare and Unforgettable Experience

We take them out we put them in a box in my office and then we take care of it this throttle when we do our inspections there's not even a drop of water you probably notice that when we're sitting there the cylinder are not dropping anything. What do you make them out of 86 8630 badian modified steel steel? Right, yep, we're going to let another train around us so we don't delay them so we're going to slow down and just kind of let it pass on by no we usually pass other trains now that is a cool experience. You've got two railroads, two tracks and some case just three right, and we can actually pass other trains we'll be doing 45 or 50 they're doing 30 40 yeah you know it takes miles to get past them, it's quite the experience.

I'm surprised you don't have different whistles different pitches you can control that but no real high pitch, no I know on my uh Advanced tractor I got three different whistles really high medium and a low whistle when we get to a road crossing by regulation we blow two Longs a short and along you'll hear that. Yeah and we blow the whistle so frequently that you know you just rather than just blow it in some mundane fashion, there is an artistic Nuance that that anyone who's been around a Locomo for a while, it's a matter of price this is a curve where the train is articulating isn't it? Watch your rears everybody that guy you going let that diesel pass us catch that guy let's go get him. So I'm training Austin, Austin has essentially a learner's permit yeah uh it's called a class 3, a Federal Railroad Administration class three I also have another gentleman that I'm training kurk and Jimmy who is up here, Jenny was the fireman from Council Bluff to Missouri Valley.

I've got another young man that I'm training as a fireman as well. How many guys are licensed to drive these IND States? Any idea the United States there's got to be hundreds if not nearly a thousand or more. Yeah on the main line yeah yeah but there's a lot of steam locomotives around our our steam is running fine we're having trouble with our electronic computer, you know Sherlock Holmes said electricity is a high priestess of false security. Is it just a matter of shutting it off and rebooting more or less? Yeah okay oh just had a fix a minor problem and I'm run away again, a problem of modern Electronics nothing to do with skin.

Hi you guys you know with the exception of the modern cars I don't imagine scenery in this route has changed much in the last 100 years pretty much just cornfield. You know it really wasn't until the 19th century that people went much went any faster than a horse could ride, imagine riding a horse and then getting a chance to riding this thing and you pull in 600 tons all right are you ready to blow the whistle Jay you want to blow the whistle yeah are you ready to do a Casey Jones that one Jay good job Jay L. I think I just sound a distress signal you're doing a good job Joe J, Joe yeah thanks lots but it's really exciting once on a lifetime thing I I I mean I've read about this thing my whole life so it's really cool to be able to get a chance to ride on it and then the fact that you keep it going for the Next Generation the one after that yeah yeah it's pretty exciting.

Yeah we're very we're very privileged that uh that we do this and and uh up stand behind us. You know we've been doing this particular project for over a decade did you get to meet a lot of the old guys that maybe when this thing retired in the '50s any of them get to see it run again only a few yeah and they were in their '90s then yeah yeah but they got to see it together. They did yeah there were two when we had this on its inaugural Run for the 150th anniversary of the driving the golden spike they were Two Gentlemen there wow that actually worked on it in the '50s as firemen you know they're in their 20s then yeah that's great.

Oh yeah well Ed thanks a lot my friend come out to California we'll take you out in Adobo oh we'd love it yeah we'd love it a lot of people want to meet movie stars or athletes today I got to meet one of my heroes the big boy pretty exciting hope you enjoyed it as much as I did got to watch him pull away. You know who really loves this neighbors bye guys thanks for everything the hobos are getting a lot better Lookout

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall are you ready to blow the whistle J want blow the whistle yeah you ready to do a Casey Jones well we came all the way to Council Bluffs Iowa to see big boy the world's most powerful steam engine look at the size of this thing uh and thanks to Union Pacific and Ed Dickens he's in charge of this whole deal so tell us what we got here well you're looking at 1941 technology this particular locomotive was built November of 41 600 tons 7,000 horsepower it's one of 25 built the only one operating in the world today and people don't realize how big a role trains played in building the United States I mean prior to trains it took months and months to cross the United States by horse and wagon when trains came in that you could do it in a matter of weeks in fact Abraham Lincoln came here to Council Bluffs didn't he to kind of inaugurate this line isn't that correct the driving of the golden spike began right here in Council Bluffs Iowa with with General uh with General Dodge and Abraham Lincoln not far from here yeah and as they begin to build the railroad and establish all the different relationships the National Park Service was actually created with with uh the ability to take all of the passengers into the national parks railroading was the best way to get there designed and built by Union Pacific Architects and engineers and to this day with the national parks Foundation there's opportunities for millions of kids to be exposed to this technology and all the fascinating technology that that provides and you can still do it today I mean trains you know we don't hear about the role trains play in America but it really is pretty amazing isn't it how much tonnage is moved way more than Trucking isn't it well if you think about I mean look at the gravel and look at everything and all the stuff in our lives it's kind of operating in the background but the clothes on our back the glasses the plastic the rubber our shoes our jeans our fabric every aspect all the building materials in your houses I mean the the list is endless if you look at the average train I mean imagine the Commodities in there all the chemicals and the petrochemicals and all the raw materials all the finished product I mean just clickity clack just slamming down that freeway 247 yeah and the fun thing is now rich people have fancy cars back then they had fancy real cars and they would hook up to Union Pacific You' bring your rail car if you're a JP morg or somebody you have it built you could hook on to Union Pacific pay whatever it is and just drive across the United States fantastic fantastic pretty cool well let's take a little closer look care now you see I love it when American corporations are proud of their Heritage and obviously you do something like rebuilding this for love because this is not a this is not a profit generating thing these things were built when technology was expensive and labor was cheap now it's the other way around isn't it it's completely opposite it's pretty simple technology but it's incredibly robust and incredibly strong tell us a little bit of the history well it was built to do the same thing we do today this is the steam locomotive equivalent of what we have operating today it looks older but from an efficiency standpoint this is state-of-the-art 1940s designed and built specifically to move a lot of tonnage and to solve complex Transportation issues that the railroad needed to solve and big boy did it you know steam really ran America from the early 1800s well into the 1900s then the internal combustion came in and then Trucking and then steam graduate this is the last days of steam this is probably one of the very last steam V Vehicles produced in America isn't it this technology does represent that the Union Pacific bot we still run the last locomotive we bought the UP 844 but this class of locomotives there were 25 ultimately built designed in the late 1930s this one was built in November of 41 but it does represent the last gasp of steam and they ran for 17 years yeah and the nice thing about steam is it'll pretty much run forever you know I've got some steam vehicles I enjoy you can leave sit for 25 years put water in them get the fire going and you go you know try that with a mid90s car with a computer and you know unless you got that little relay box whatever it's never going to run again whereas this it's it's all just hand labor isn't it there are no tiny Parts in this thing AR not not really yeah all the parts you can see I mean look at the size of the wrenches you need for some of those nuts and bolts but uh for what it is it's it's actually quite delicate in that it runs like a Swiss watch and the seat of your pants finesse I'm sure you experience that with your doble or any of the other manual cars this locomotive is is a very fine running machine and there's nothing like the power of steam we know we're used to engines where you have to rev them up and you need a transmission to be able to move them because they don't have the power to move on their own so they got to go through a series of Gears I always call this the hand of God it's like this you're just being pushed down the road yes and this weighs how much does it weigh this is 600 tons Jay 600 tons yes and it pulls away like nothing yes it's it's equivalent to three of those locomotives you see back there so this represents the combined weight of three of those big modern we call it an sd70 three of those and how much weight can this haul can it pull not getting into the too much nuts and bolts but they they were said to pull a train 5 miles long on flat ground really five miles long 5 miles long that's the guy I'm always stuck behind that's that's right and in the in the context of our our traffic today uh we we run we run a lot of traffic that's efficient the big boy was designed to haul more cars to do the job more efficiently back before that we had to use multiple locomotives that process was called double heading the big boy solved the problem eliminated the need for that second engine and all the associated cost with that so the big boy was able to take more tonnage up the grade you know the FC even as you know nothing about trains just the magnificence of it just the size of it I mean I imagine kids little kids must go crazy when they see this this is like meeting a dinosaur isn't it it's like see it's like seeing an actual dinosaur that goes down the road and this is almost the equivalent and steam of a of Apollo 11 you know because it used to take months to cross America and then the railroads came in and it was dued to a matter of weeks which must have just seemed like air travel when it first started to me the fact you could go from New York to California in 14 days that it's unbelievable versus five or six months yeah yes and and risk your life in the process yeah yeah yeah Union Pacific aren't are they they're the ones that joined with the golden spike if I remember my history my fifth grade history that connected the East and the West with rail for the first time that had been done is it that's correct and it started right here in Council Bluffs oh is that right Abraham Lincoln was not very far from here when he gave the order to General Dodge but it really was the equivalent of John F Kennedy in 196 61 saying we're going to put a man on the Moon by the end oh it'll never happen and people didn't think that would ever happen back in the day so Lincoln must have really been impressed show us a little bit more these are the Pistons here well this this is what we call a four cylinder simple meaning that the steam is used one time so this design this all represents one big casting you see here double acting cylinder here what we call a piston valve and you can see that casting right up there notice that it's all bare metal that's because of the tremendous heat right here of that superheated steam very simple system looks complex but here's your piston Rod connected to the main rod and all the connecting rods and that's what propels each engine so this represents two steam locomotives under one big boiler and it's amazing how powerful is when you realize there's no transmission needed this this to generate the power like like I said with a car the engine C goes to a series of Gears which would step down to give you the power whereas Steam just moves you right from the get-go you probably have 10,000 foot PBS of torque from rest something like that without running through all the math of this thing that the Tractive force on this it's a little bit different with a diesel the Tractive the starting Tractive effort is actually weak when you think about it this produces its max power over 30 m an hour whereas a conventional locomotive we get our money out of our locomotives at a slower speed they got their money out of this machine over roughly 25 30 35 40 miles an hour 7,000 horsepower Jay now on on my steam Vehicles the steam cars I have they have a thing called hookup the Piston goes back and forth and once you're rolling you pull a lever and it cuts the Piston travel to save steam does this do that too same thing same thing exactly yep so this is just a giant version it is of what I have which is which means I have to get one of these we could show you a few things and you could run it give me an idea how big this thing is we're going to walk down to the cab shouldn't take us no longer than half an hour to get down here this thing is huge oh my God but you just feel like a a 5-year-old kid if you know anything about train you recognize this whole system here the way it drives the wheels now in a traditional locomotive that would be a Stevenson's link but that's a little bit different isn't it well that's called the Ecentric Crank That does control the valve gear right that see that little horizontal Rod there that's your what's called a radius rod right that controls forward and reverse and everything is connected together the valve event are fixed and that you reference the hooking up that's what you control you control forward reverse and somewhat of a I not really infinite but a really fine range of a control from when you start the locomotive to to when you're running at maximum speed and it's the same forward or revers the engine doesn't care which dire the engine go back it doesn't care cuz when you it's almost like start step start technology when you stop the engine stops not like a car the engine doesn't keep running the engine stops and that goes the other way when you go want to go backwards and then you go forward so what do we got is this a a 488 4884 four it is a 4884 okay tell us what that means so we got four wheels in the front that's called a lead truck or an engine truck now those don't drive right they don't no they they guide and Lead this massive locomotive into curves and in out of Curves the first set of eight drivers this represents a single engine it's also interesting to note that this represents our other locomotive the 844 it has an 8 in driver where these are 68 and then back here you have an identical set another engine right behind us right here so here's the entire second engine right so you've got the valves the cylinder an entire second engine right here same thing and the interesting thing about this design in order for the locomotive to work really efficiently is they design both engines are identical so as you open the throttle the steam flow equal to both engines so both engines are actually operating in sync I call it the articulated effect so even though one engine May slip and they will be out of syn right they will pretty quickly get right back in syn okay and there's a really neat sound that the articulated locomotive makes I'm a big sound effects person so it's but when it's operating it sounds like a two cylinder instead of a four-cylinder locomotive really cool machine now something I find fascinating if you look at the brakes they're the same idea of the brakes you'd have on your swin bicycle You Pull It L and it literally rubs against the tire that's it you know you'd think in any kind of modern vehicle you'd have a brake Hub or a disc brake and a in in an automobile this would be a speis or some brake material but that's cast iron on it's cast iron on steel and that must that must glow red hot when when you're hitting the brace doesn't it it actually it the the very edge of it will get hot and of course you smell that and that's part of the Nuance of run running a steam locomotive you smell what we call our driver brakes right there's oil and grease and it burns off usually pretty quickly but this whole locomotive is all by the seat of your pants you're smelling it so an engineer comes out the way goes hey you've been with an engine haven't you yes yes I they can tell see women know that stuff when we're training a a new engineer we've been doing that here occasionally the driver brakes will come on a little bit and we just say driver brakes yeah cuz you can smell it right the thing I find fascinating if you have built model train had model trains when you're a kid these are just big versions of the small pieces that you had it's just so much fun to see them like this I like this locking mechanism here that keeps the nut from from loosening up serial number is this the train serial number is that just the parts here that's just a pattern number oh okay so this is part of the the new material that we made when Union Pacific restored this locomotive in two and a half years the original 40 the the the 4014 that had been in service had over a million 30,000 miles on it so lots of wornout stuff so this this is new called a cros head guide that nut is new and there's just all parts of new material here all forged cast machined all custom I recognize this red grease yes yeah this I use this too mobile shc good stuff yeah it does work good yeah does work good but you can see the new casting here for the valve Rod cros head new pins new bushing cylinder liner valve bushings just like an an autom new Rings all custom but unlike a modern automobile there no sealed bearings in this you've got to lubricate all these by hand don't you pretty much actually on this it is equipped with giant timkin roller bearings on the axle the actual crank pins and the rod brasses I'll show you in a minute those are bronze bushings and they're greased manually about every 80 miles or so and timkin is still making bearing that's good they know they do oh that's good you know I love it's all made in America that's the great you know when I was a kid my dad would say uh if you had a packer they'd say we had Parts made for this car as far away as Indiana wow Parts came from Indiana that's unbelievable all the way to Detroit oh yeah yeah yeah I mean there's nothing here from over you could build this in the United States without anybody else's help and you would be impressed with how long it took them to build this these were being assembled in what they called the erection shop at American locomotive company and connected New York yeah and they were building these just right up to the the the time of the buildup of World War II so there's photographs of these things coming together literally and a matter of weeks right alongside Sherman tanks when they built Willow Run which was a Ford plant which was converted to aircraft and and we were literally building planes faster than the Germans could shoot them down yeah I mean I don't think we could do that today I almost think in a lot of ways American manufacturing was more efficient 40 50 years ago cuzz everything was here and of course we couldn't have done it without the railroad that's right I mean people don't realize I don't know how much of a part railroads are people's lives today I don't think they realize that how much of stuff is moved by train moved by Freight I mean when you have a piece like this doesn't move on the back of a truck you know you might carry this piece or that arm or that lever but you realize how much of America still goes by rail it's just one of those things you just don't hear about anymore that's part of the really interesting story about having a locom motive like this because it reminds people because railroads really do they're kind of operating in the background of Our Lives you know we we'll we'll hear that train horn in the middle of the night or there'll be some you'll see a train operating under a bridge or an overpass but if you think about the volume of tonage that this locomotive was designed to build and the volume of traffic back in the 1940s the railroads were very robust to handle the traffic that these locomotives were pulling look at the weight of this thing yeah the network that we have today I'm I'm happy to say I'm very privileged to be able to operate over just about all of it and I will tell you how rugged and robust it is I'm amazed at how thank you I'm amazed at how a a simple rail like this can hold up that much weight it almost seems like it would crack or bend or break or something I mean the weight of this plus you're pulling thousands of tons pretty amazing how much of this is original in the sense that all you had to do is clean it up did the whole thing have to be completely torn down or are some parts still robust enough that we could clean up this wheel and that'll be fine you know what I mean well we we took it completely apart so if you were to look at this if uh a a kind of a train buff like me I have What's called the locomotive encyclopedia and when you look at that it shows the construction pictures of when they made these things and what all the parts look like on the factory floor well if you were in Cheyenne in 2017 2018 you would see those parts we took it apart we disassembled the front engine this took the jacket off took the boiler apart all the wheels out of it and we sand blasted everything and cleaned it put it all back together again so new parts to Old Parts I need to sit down and tally that up but I bet you we're we're at 60% new parts on all the running equipment you know the rods and the big heavy duty stuff you saw that cross out I mentioned there you know the cylinder just like in an automobile there's a liner in there that's all new on this side all the valve bushings I mean I could just go down the list and just name all the parts because our fingerprints are all over this I'm amazed that technology is still exist to make the parts you know I I have some old airplane engines and I couldn't find anybody to make a crankshaft for V12 Merlin because all of the tooling got sent to India or China or overseas somebody bought it all you know and so I wonder if you had that problem with this well that was my job and and there were a few parts that took me about a Year's worth of Emil mailing and sometimes they would go visit a factory or a manufacturing plant they had the ability to do it but they just didn't know if they really needed to even though we we only wanted like 12 parts or whatever it was so but we were able to get everything forged everything cast uh we draw it in CAD we take the old blueprints we have most all of the blueprints in 1975 this is a cool story the Union Pacific took all their steam locomotive stuff and rather than throwing it away they microfilmed it and set it aside and 1990s the Historical Society went through and they scanned everything and they sell them online anybody can buy a big boy set of drawings oh that's a great thing the foresight to do that so we have all that stuff and we convert those into modern can files and that's how you communicate to Modern industry and you can make castings CN she shops can make parts for you and that's what we did we made everything well let's let's let's continue our walk now to get to the cabin here we should be there about another 20 minutes this is the boiler right here correct this is the fireb box and combustion chamber and the neat thing about this the the crown sheet on this on this Firebox is 29 ft long and the distance over tube sheets for those people are into the technical side is 22 ft so this entire pretty much everything that you see here from that gray section that's called The Smoke Box this is all boiler fire box let's explain what the crown sheet is the crown the fire is below the crown sheet and then the water is on top of the crown sheet as long you have water over the crown sheet you'll be fine but if that ever gets below it either run away or that's why I you may not be able to run fast enough well you know I converted my to run on propane so I can shut the fire off right now you know you got coal or wood or something run away because it's going to blow just get out of there yeah well that's it's kind of the the fundamentals of steam locomotives that the water level management is very carefully monitored right good qualified guys there's just a handful of us on this locomotive we're training a few more but here on this this boiler here this is called the side sheet so there's actually a water space and you see all those little button ends those are called stay bolts and they secure that inner sheet which transitions up to that that Crown sheet that you mentioned and people don't realize how powerful steam is I've got a 1906 Advanced tractor and that beat a guy that had a twin engine diesel turbocharged the whole thing and dragged it backwards yeah and it was steep eort right yeah amazing well very good let's see what else we got here so you can hear the oil fire in there you can hear that so originally these were built to burn coal that's why this the whole Underside here is very large that was all great area 150 square ft for that Coal Fire when we we restored this we had no intention of running coal converted to burn oil a very simple system you can hear that atomizer and kind of hear that oil gurgling around in there and you hear that that combustion there just flowing in naturally drawn in through the natural process of this thing running and how often do you have to drain the Firebox to clean the Firebox not so much with oil I guess only once we have an inspection period 31 service days we go through an annual maintenance process but it is very clean compared to Coal burning coal you you have literally tons of Ash daily to contend with yeah okay well here we are at the end now this this is your uh tender right here correct got your water or is water or coal or or or oil in here what is there there's two compartments if you look up here right in the middle of that word Union you see a diagonal rivet line yeah that was what's called a slope sheet for the coal to naturally flow down into a stoker mechanism and that's what delivered the coal well there's a fuel tank placed in that coal space and around it like a big horseshoe is your water so there's 25,000 gallons of water here and because we no longer have all the water Logistics that went away years ago with the steam locomotive we have two cars behind this that are just water so with all that fuel and water you know we're good for about 250 Mi now you don't need like Eon racing water you just use regular we would love Evon racing water but we just can't find 50,000 gallons and open all those little Bott Fe it all day any significance to 4014 or that's just the number that in the build cycle or does it signify anything a little bit of a story there so there were 25 of these this uh this was the first group of 20 the four 44 was donated in 1961 to the Los Angeles County Fairground the railway and locomotive Historical Society Museum still running called rail Giants great place big locomotives out there this locomotive when the decision was made to restore a big boy I had been out and I looked at this locomotive and I can't really remember all the details but I had heard through the grap Vine that they wanted this thing to run again and so it was in Los Angeles it it's sunny out there it's not very wet and they had taken pretty good care of it so it wasn't deteriorated like a lot of locomotives that sit in a park and they're out in the weather all the time so from from the moment it was my my decision my choice to pick and I wanted the 44 and we towed it home rebuilt it to an app years wait well how do you tow this home obviously you don't you don't have a Ford F150 how do you tell this thing home well we're a railroad and we can do just about anything you need that's right we're a railroad we anything we want that's right that's right mister so we had we have another locomotive that was numbered to 4014 here in a minute you can go back that's the 405 so we had the 4014 Diesel and this is a 4884 and we had another engine that was numbered 4884 okay and we did some prep work several months we were tinkering with everything getting it all lubed up getting it greased up did some federal paperwork and we literally towed it all the way way from Los Angeles back to Cheyenne now here's a dumb question did you pull it on tracks with the wheels turning or did you did you get it up on you don't get out how do you how do you are you pulling it on tracks yeah absolutely we Lea frogged it out of there so it was a mile away from where we needed it to be so my team and I we built a giant model railroad our colleagues in California gave me 26 pieces of 40ft track panels we rented big for CTS and we literally just built the track and moved it curved it moved it we moved it a mile in 7 Days wow and then coordinated with everybody had excellent collaboration I mean it was some of the funnest stuff we've done I like this one night on the tonight's show we had an elephant on ah in the middle of the show The Elephant was backstage and peed 55 gallon I mean we had guys with squeaky the whole place it it that's just reminded me of suddenly what's that I thought a pipe had burth it just flooded the whole place yeah so on a nutshell how'd the number get there okay so these were built number 4,000 to number 4,24 right this one was one of those 25 locomotives it was going to be scrapped and the organization asked the Union Pacific to donate it they donated it out there so here's the 4014 sitting out there for laor being taken care of nicely in the museum we asked to return this locomotive they gave it back to us so we could restore it so this is 4014 out of 25 wow there happens to be eight of them in existence this is the only one running now tell us about the origin Nam big boy cuz I think of a kid holding a hamburger out front of a restaurant where did they come from when these locomotives were being assembled at American locomotive company and this case that would have been uh mid 1941 an anonymous employee went out as this locomotive the very first one it wasn't this one it was the number 4,000 and they rolled it out the door and they were just testing them Somebody went up there and they took a piece of chalk and they wrote the words big boy with a V for victory on the Smoke Box somebody snapped a picture of it it really took hold and throughout that entire period of that all the effort building up to the war and then the history of these locomotives that became the story of the big boy and occasionally we'll put that chalk riding on the Smoke Box to commemorate what the Big Boy locomotive represents to America can we take a look in the cabin absolutely okay want to follow me up all right go ahead climb right up here 1940 style here you go Jay hi welcome to the cab of the big boy Jay oh it's great J like you meet Ted shy Ted how are you sir nice to meet you yeah those are the same water valves I have on my Stanley actually the same yeah the same ones actually yeah that's your water level right that's right on the boiler there's you need two right because of the the length of the locomotive uphill and down the water level varies right and they help you maintain the proper water level and I assume this is danger right below this uh those are just kind of some some key lines uh we're we're working on training some firemen so we're just kind of giving them some visual cues uh danger is actually down in here okay so at at no time we water ever be out of this bottom glass cuz I can understand that when it gets down you turn on the you turn on the pump and as you're going you watch the level rise and it gets above half you can shut it off again on a steam locomotive it it's a little bit different so we're maintaining what we call the evaporative rate the rate at which the locomotive is boiling water producing his power so we're we're replacing that water at the same rate and the same interval if you will that we're consuming it we've got an injector here that exhaust steam injector and a big live steam injector here and it uses the live steam or the exhaust Steam and a combination life steam to put that water in the boiler it's just like a pump on your car yeah see this I guess this is meant to run at a at a constant rate of fuel use in a car you stop at a light oh you oh and then you yeah so you you're kind of that's why the doo has that draft boost yeah okay oh very cool you still do it but you do it much more controlled and you plan ahead a lot you know we'll run up and stop and we tone everything back this is called a spot fire right here when we're underway you know we're generating greater horsepower therefore this fire is really ripping and roaring along that's the Gates of Hell LGE any reason why these gauges are like this style and those gauges are that style so these are actually a more modern style of valve so these are a Ford steel valve modern available properly engineered for the steam pressure most of the valves on the locomotive you know they were period valves from the 40s they're heavy duty they're rugged but they also are 80 years older older see I like these cuz you've got these little Nubs here that yeah I I always had trouble with those when they because yeah I have to put a wrench on you get oil and grease on your hands yeah right right right yeah and over here we have the engineer and we have what's called PTC positive train control right and when the PTC system is on and active oh is that new fancy electronic stuff kids today they don't know what they're doing it so we have this system and it has a series of heavy duty computers GPS antennas and interfaces with the whole other world out there and it provides a layer of really good effective control well I mean I think it's just great I love the fact that un Pacific just Treasures its history you know you look back cuz so many people you move on to next thing you throw it away you throw it away it it's so nice to save something like this and like you said kids go nuts when they see it cuz it's like a dinosaur it's big you know they want to have a model of it they want to ride in it oh it's great yeah there's the the 10-year-old kids the 30 40 50 80y old kids they they just love it there's a few modern things we have a spomer this finometer is actually 40 years old but it's modern and this electronic device monitors the air pressure at the end of the train and then we have a 12vt vehicle radio right up here other than that all of this locomotive is all original 1940s of course we converted to to burn oil so it looks different than it did when it used to burn coal but this is all very simple very basic technology and you even carry the sand in case of fire well the sand is used to sand out the flu so when you're burn oil over time there's just a little bit of byproducts of the combustion it's kind of like a little fine layer that attaches to the metal in there right right and when we're working hard enough we can take a scoop of that and we pour it right into the sand hole and it sucks it in there and it kind of bounces around it out it does and you get a little plume of soot following the Train That's that Ted likes the sand the flu and now these pop offs what are those are those those are called wash out plugs okay and uh we we have a lot of questions about these cuz these are actually dog dishes that we get at the the pet store so that's a stainless steel dog dish with the bottom cut out of it makes a really nice thimble but there's those wash out plugs throughout the this is called the backhead and you can see them along the the the side of the boiler called the combustion chamber so when you're outside you can look at those stainless steel dog dishes but that's what we take out when we wash the and go through our our annual maintenance how many miles a year you think you put on there um this year will'll be just under 7,000 when we're done with this year we'll have just under 21,000 miles on the locomotive since we've restored it in 2019 and you still go to national parks and do all of that well we we we go wherever they tell us yeah and the the fun part of our job is that we have a job where we never say no when they want the locomotive our job is to figure out how we get it there we work with hundreds thousands of our colleagues to make this thing happen and do you have to replace track because this thing is so big and so heavy or the tracks They still take it huh oh the track is very robust if you think about when the steam locomotives were roaming the Earth the track structure was very strong very strong by today's standards our track structure which you'll see if you just look right over my shoulder there we're talking about a rugged heavy duty Network and the tonnages that we carry on our railroads today the weight per car is up but the weight per axle is pretty comparable like this locomotive the actual weight on each axle is just slightly under what the weight of the the axles on the locomotive are so pound for pound it's essentially the same railroad a lot more stuff moves by rail than people think don't they absolutely you always here Trucking it's not I mean rail is probably as big as it ever was isn't it if you take say an average load of lumber yeah that's four to five trucks you know uh one truck on the road a big heavy duty truck is 25 tons of gravel or asphalt or some other commodity one rail car is 130 tons and when you've got 200 rail cars just think of the equivalent amount of trucks wow a lot of the uh other traffics you know you'll see trains running out here with all those containers just think each one of those containers represents a single load of truck and you've got three 400 of them on one train so it's safe to say your job is safe yes yeah you want to sit in the engineer seat J yeah let me sit in the engineer seat see here what I love about the steam car it's like 100 something degrees in here I stick my head out the window oh I get a chill even though it's it's 80 out there but I feel like I'm freezing because you get so used to the Heat and how many gallons of water does it hold in the boiler there's there's over 11,000 gallons of water in the boiler when we're operating down the track it's around the range of 9500 or so now is is this boiler ever is so I guess it's cold when you shut it down but does is it ever totally shut down like in the summer is there always heat in the boiler when we leave on a trip we steam it up a few days before we leave right and there's there's certain technical reasons on on what we call our service days right but every day we're on the road until we get down to Texas we're going to do some maintenance down there we have a fire in the boiler when we're operating when we're done at night here in about 20 minutes we're going to shut that fire off and we close all of the air surfaces off and this thing will retain heat really good we'll come back in the morning about 5 6 a.m. it'll St 200 lb of pressure on it the water will be still up in that top class we light the fire and the way we go that's same thing with my doble yeah so from dead cold you haven't run it for 6 months how long does it take to fire up we take about 4 days 4 days y back in the days when they pregnant you know want to get to the hospital don't don't don't don't steam up your steam yeah but we we take we take care of it it's it's it's our baby you know there's certain process we go through we we let this giant giant boiler think you know you got to realize this thing expands an inch from where it is cold to hot so we do that nice and even we control all that stuff and you're heating up 11,000 of gallon 11,000 gallons of water from cold correct now do you heat it up full high pressure on the boiler or or do you heat it gradually gradually we have a a plant that heats up about 280° water okay and we flow that water in here for a couple of days it fills it up with that really hot water then we've got an external Steam Plant we Jam that on there we jack her up to about 50 lb of pressure we light her up we're up and running so you can't shock it no I mean in the old days this thing isn't an old little fragile Christmas ornament it's going to break but we're just we're diligent we're careful yeah it's still 100y old yeah it's really rugged really solid we test it it can take it but we're really careful with it and what is this there that's your throttle oh that's throttle of course 7,000 horsepower reach up and grab 7,000 horsepower there you go there you are just don't pull it back too far right yeah very nice and here's your forward and reverse here right that's your brake for the locomotive and we've got a few other little custom gadgets that we've added to it that it had during the steam days but we've modified it so we can control those while we're actually underway and this is your cylinder drain right here that's right yep if you want to go ahead and rotate that to the right well you open it there you go you got to crank it hard spin it spin it hard all the way around there you go now they're closed and now fling it really quick with your wrist and fling it all the way the other way counterclockwise yeah yeah that's just like the double yeah yeah steam technology is is fascinating and you know it's funny cuz people think it's such a mystery but in 1940 more guys knew about steam than knew about interal combustion especially the older guys cuz that's what they grew up with every you had steam ships best Even build a steam airplane you ever see that have Google labs best steam airplane and they built it to be a spy plane because it it didn't make any noise at all it could fly over all you heard was going around yeah back when these locomotives were in regular service thousands of people operated these just like our trains today yeah you know it's very specialized today there's a lot of really good qualified steam locomotive people but it's uh this technology it's uh you know you got the heat uh the work I mean you you get dirty you it's just the nature of it and there's a long apprenticeship when you serve in a job like this you just don't jump up here and start running it well I love the fact you realize it only takes one or two generations for technology to just disappear and then the fact that you guys and un Pacific is keeping it going I really think it's teric you know there's a wonderful College mcferson college they do a whole four-year course in automobile restoration steam cars old electric cars everything you know and they have apprentices and I bet some of their apprentices would love to work with you on this it's nice to get the Next Generation involved yeah that's what we have we've got we've got uh a younger generation that's uh getting ready to take over the ropes and a lot of different parts of the locomotive uh the maintenance of it operation firing but that's part of that apprenticeship we talked about because you can read a lot of books about all of the different Nuance but it's all the 1940s you know it's but it's uh as complicated as this looks it's a simp machine but it's seat of the pants run it by your wristwatch control it with your hands you know it's funny I've got a 1950 isal SS a airplane engine in a car and I've got the manual in the manual most men were illiterate so the manual just guys with work shirts and ties everything was a picture it's all pictures of how to how to put the bear cuz I know you you drop the oil pan the bearings are in the pain take the bearing out put new bangs and slap them on send them back up in the air again you know and it's a fascinating CU realize they couldn't read but they could understand the pictures and he just showed you how to rebuild the whole engine just through pictures it's really really kind of neat there's a fascinating story of the development of all this this technology and many of the the the people that grew up and went through they ultimately did go to college but many of them came from a pretty humble beginning started out as a laborer started out in a position in the shop and they worked their way up the story of those actual that designed this locomotive that's that story you know when I was a kid I was 6 years old and somebody gave me a book Mike Mulligan in the steam shovel you remember that book oh absolutely get in the basement you got to leave it there yeah and the uh the family next door us the voland they had the coal man come every month with a shoot and he would shoot coal into their basement and I would go sit and I'd sit on the pile of coal and read Mike mull the steam show so that's how I kind of got we're going to go for a ride tomorrow J tomorrow morning but first I'd like to uh we'd like to take you in and show you where we maintain the passenger cars so we have restored a fleet of 1940s 1950s what we call Streamliner cars you can see some of them that we're coupled to right now we'd like to take you in and show you the Heritage Fleet shop let's do it well Jay it was great visiting with you I've got to go get the big boy ready all right thank you very much you're very welcome my two colleagues Bill Gobles and calling Bill how are you Amy how you guys wow this is a nice setup this is where all the Heritage Fleet is stored this is where majority of the work is done on the fleet the ready track which is outside trains go out come back into the building here this is where we do all of our midyear inspections our quarterly inspections our outbounds inbounds most of that work's all done in here prior to train going back out on the ready track which it departs from there and what vintage are most of these cars in here most of these cars are from the 50s oh uh they'll range from 49 there are some 49 built cars in this mix up to 65 actually would be the newest car in here but they'll range mostly 50s vintage okay so you keep updating them you try to keep the Vintage look or how does that work we do but it's very difficult sometimes to hide the technology you want that that vintage feel you want to make it feel like you step back in time when you first walk into it so it's very hard sometimes to hide the technology but you don't want those hot Ember hitting your clothes you know yeah yeah try to avoid that part that's true we don't want that yeah you don't want that well very good can we take a look at some of the cars sure just wait just watch your step on this rail make sure you step over it please this the first one this is the first one this is the Green River this is the St Louis car this is one of our high-end business cars wow kitchen area here yeah whole kitchen this would be considered the crew quarters for the crew all right and then we're walking into the dining area slash meeting area have their conference meetings dining area oh this is great yeah it's a nice way to travel it's beautiful we try to hide technology when we're in these cars so we we have little Cubbies and secret hidden things everywhere very nice Bill if you could hit the button under the it's a TV table for the TV that's hidden behind oh very cool look at that so this is a car that we would normally uh use for high-end uh so our CEO will ride in this car during the travels and we'll walk down the hallway over here this here is a a bathroom right public bathroom so it's not connected to any bedroom or anything and then there is an office another bathroom and shower and the bedroom oh and this a sitting area and this is the observation room oh this is great wow well it's a nice way to travel you know be yes very much so oh yeah beat Southwest yes sit down kind of Rush take a load off sit down relax get ready for your trip tomorrow yeah we're not drive to tomorrow I'll just camp out here you know it's kind of interesting to travel in a car where you have more room than you could possibly use we're all used to cramped air planes you go why would anyone take a train anywhere it takes so long but then you get inside one of these you realize it's like your house it's like you're driving in your house you got all kinds of room you can stretch out I got pretty good bacon too come on please thank you please keep the noise down thank you folks as you can see my my crowd's not as big as Roosevelt and some of those guys they they're probably stuck in traffic that's why there's nobody thank you all for coming but right now hey let's take a look at the inside of the train and we'll go up and uh we'll show you how we operate the train too I'm going to sit in the engineers's booth a kind of could see leam niss with a gun going through here kind expect to run into President Garfield in here well how cool is this this is the Dome or the observation deck I never thought I'd enjoy going 40 m hour you see the engine enveloped in Steam up there I have no idea how many hundreds of tons this thing is pulling away with but it's got to be it's got to be a lot now you see that black smoke that means the engines run a little Rich they're using more fuel as soon as that black smoke disappears that's when the engine is running at Optimum efficiency it's like a moving neighborhood you know it's like all the houses on your street are going down the street at the same time this is a pretty luxurious way to travel back in the early 1900s or even late 1800s this is what rich people did instead of having a limo or a Bugatti or Ferrari or some kind of fancy car you got your own rail car and you outfitted it the way you want it now you see a slight Bend in the track up there this engine is like 132 ft long so it needs to articulate which means it needs to to move when it goes around the corners even even a big sweeping corner you still you know you you still got a little bit of movement there as you can see the black smoke is dissipating and the smoke white smoke is becoming clear and pretty soon that'll be pretty much gone all together and the rest is just steam the train is still accelerating so that I think you give me a little more throttle than is necessary and that's why you get that heavy black smoke you know back in the day how you got there was almost as important as where you were going because it was an adventure it was comfortable you know even air travel the durables that were crossing the at antic before airplanes they were like this they were big comfortable they had a dining car they had a sleeping car you know imagine trying to sleep on an airplane thank you you know it's interesting this train is on this on this route all the time yet the same people come out every day just to see it Go by it's just such an amazing site to see something HS huge they call this the heartland of America cooler it the home base in Cheyenne Wyoming when count BL now and uh well we're going through the heartland of America in this tour the TR to go through 10 states now see if you're in a plane you can do it an hour and a half but then you wouldn't see anything there but it really is Leisure Travel you know you don't you don't really travel leisurely anymore you just s of get to the place and it's annoying and you're on the plane and the guy in front of you is kicking the back of your seat the guy in back you kicking the back of you seat whatever it might be this is leisurely look at all the room room you have and it it's incredible I mean you can see the the train articulating here I mean notice the cars are going like this there you go as you can see the walls are festooned with period pictures 30s 40s 1950s there's a whistle stub guy right there who is that is that is that ni I can't come on let's take a look at the dining car has Star Trek doors It Go pretty good all right this is the way to travel let show you one of the bedroom ohy this is pretty cool got to crash out good night well we're in Missouri Valley Iowa well I got my safety glasses got to put the air protection on here's ited hey good morning Jay ready to go for ride ready to go let's give it a shot let's go all right after you thanks how Bois howdy Mr J how you doing sir gentleman hello again all right the pist a car engine will turn 3 four 5,000 revolutions this is in the hundreds right how many how many revolutions per mile think you get on the engine 296 296 revolutions per mile which is pretty amazing shows how much power it has and you can hear a conventional four cylinder 1 2 3 4 this is two they're sing paint they get in yeah no electric watches on the train what are you doing about 40 m hour 35 34 34 mph let thinking more perfect day I always know that old song you can hear the whistle blow miles oh yeah you can hear this for probably at least four or five miles four 5 miles 650 PSI 300 lb at the whistle it's it's probably pushing 700° at 300 lb I get the feeling this is what Ed would be doing when he wasn't working this is what he does on his day off too what is the throttle is it a needle valve no it's a series of big like a poet valve Popa valve a giant just they look just like a big intake or exhaust valve but they're that big around right and they're forged we had them all custom Machin we made them they slam down yeah and you're working against that 300 lb of pressure so you got to really you have to hand lap them in yeah yep he and I take them out and we put them in every time we run the locomotive oh is that right we take them out we put them in a box in my office and then we take care of it this throttle when we do our inspections there's not even a drop of water you probably notice that when we're sitting there the cylinder are not dropping anything and what do you make them out of 86 8630 badian modified steel steel right yep we're going to we're going to let another train around us so we don't delay them so we're going to slow down and just kind of let his thing Long's not try to pass us no we usually pass other trains now that is a cool experience you've got two railroads two tracks and some case just three right and we can actually pass other trains we'll be doing 45 or 50 they're doing 30 40 yeah you know it takes miles to get past them it's quite the experience I'm surprised you don't have different whistles different pitches you can control that but no real high ped no I know on my uh Advanced tractor I got three different whistles really high medium and a low whistle when we get to a road crossing by regulation we blow two Longs a short and along you'll hear that yeah and we blow the whistle so frequently that you know you just rather than just blow it in some mundane fashion there is an artistic Nuance that that anyone who's been around a Locomo for a a while it's a matter of price this is a curve where the train is articulating isn't it yes right here you can see it a little bit watch your rears everybody that guy you going let that diesel pass us catch that guy let's go get him so I'm training Austin Austin has essentially a learner's permit yeah uh it's called a class 3 a Federal Railroad Administration class three I also have another gentleman that I'm training kurk and Jimmy who is up here Jenny was the fireman from Council Bluff to Missouri Valley I've got another young man that I'm training as a fireman as well how many guys are licensed to drive these IND States any idea the United States there's got to be hundreds if not nearly a thousand or more yeah on the main line yeah yeah but there's a lot of steam locomotives around our our steam is running fine we're having trouble with our electronic computer you know Sherlock Holmes said electricity is a high priestess of false security is it just a matter of shutting it off and rebooting more or less yeah okay oh just had a fix a minor problem and I'm run away again a problem of modern Electronics nothing to do with skin hi you guys you know with the exception of the modern cars I don't imagine scenery in this route has changed much in the last 100 years pretty much just cornfield you know it really wasn't until the 19th century that people went much went any faster than a horse could ride imagine riding a horse and then getting a chance to riding this thing and you pull in 600 tons all right are you ready to blow the whistle Jay you want to blow the whistle yeah are you ready to do a Casey Jones that one Jay good job Jay L I think I just sound a distress signal you're doing a good job Joe J Joe yeah thanks lry it's been great oh great thanks a lot but it's really exciting once on a lifetime thing I I I mean I've read about this thing my whole life so it's really cool to be able to get a chance to ride on it and then the fact that you keep it going for the Next Generation the one after that yeah yeah it's pretty exciting yeah we're very we're very privileged that uh that we do this and and uh up stand behind us you know we've been doing this particular project for over a decade did you get to meet a lot of the old guys that maybe when this thing retired in the ' 50s any of them get to see it run again only a few yeah and they were in their '90s then yeah yeah but they got to see it together they did yeah there were two when we had this on its inaugural Run for the 150th anniversary of the driving the golden spike they were Two Gentlemen there wow that actually worked on it in the ' 50s as firemen you know they're in their 20s then yeah that's great oh yeah well Ed thanks a lot my friend come out to California we'll take you out in Adobo oh we'd love it yeah we'd love it a lot of people want to meet movie stars or athletes today I got to meet one of my heroes the big boy pretty exciting hope you enjoyed it as much as I did got to watch him pull away you know who really loves this neighbors bye guys thanks for everything the hobos are getting a lot better Lookout\n"