"Pickup_man" (zekeh)
08/06/2019 at 10:36 • Filed to: None
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"Pickup_man" (zekeh)
08/06/2019 at 10:36 • Filed to: None | 7
| 16 |
The Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 was in my general area this past weekend and my wife was gone with kiddo so my buddy and I decided to make a fun bike trip/camping weekend out of it.
Big Boy was set to arrive in Omaha at 7:45 PM Friday night. Omaha is about 3 hours away from us so I took off work early in the hopes that we could catch it on the move. We stopped about 30-40 minutes north of Omaha to fill with gas and checked the live tracker on the train. Unfortunately for us it was way ahead of schedule and had already arrived in town.
With the pressure to get there off we split off of the interstate and found some fun back roads that ran along the Missouri River valley through western Iowa, stopped for some food at a sketchy Chinese restaurant (that was very good), picked up some libations and made for camp where we got lucky and nabbed the second to last spot, with the people right behind us taking the final camping spot.
Saturday morning we headed into Omaha where we got to see 4014. This is the second big boy I’ve seen (4005 in Denver) and it never fails to astound me how massive these things are. I think I might make it a goal to try and see every remaining Big Boy (not realizing there is another already in Omaha I could have checked one more off the list), but I’ll probably wait until my son is just a little older so he can experience and remember these incredible machines.
My pictures aren’t great, and the sun was on the wrong side of the train, but enjoy anyway.
Afterwords we hit up a delicious shushi place in DT Omaha and meandered our way back home running up more back
roads along the river valley which was surprisingly pretty
. In was an awesome weekend overall, putting about 450 miles on the bike and I can’t wait to do something similar again.
Quick fun fact: There is a box car set up as a mini museum that you can walk through. There were a couple people on the train crew helping people up the stairs and so we asked them for a quick fun fact about the train. Fuel consumption at WOT is 200 gallons of water and 40 gallons of oil per mile, before the steam conversion it took 30 tons of coal to move the train 60 miles.
Ready for an adventure!
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 10:52 |
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oh dude I am so jelly - we were in Oshkosh for Airventure and I was gonna go Friday to see Big Boy as it traversed through Wisconsin. Well, Oshkosh and the planes won, so I’ll search out another trip. From Michigan, so that’ll be a trip. Good story, thanks for sharing!
Pich, with Z32 now featuring Civic [Si] / No
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 11:15 |
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that thing is so cool
MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 11:22 |
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Nice...I completely forgot to put this on my calendar since it went right through Milwaukee and was in Chicago for 2 days. :(
Guess I’ll have to take a longer trip to see it at some point.
McMike
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 11:40 |
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Is that one of the ones that sits on top of that “welcome to Omaha” hill?
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Pickup_man
> MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
08/06/2019 at 11:42 |
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It’s kinda skirted around my area (no UP rails where I’m at) for the last several weeks, going through Omaha once, then through Iowa and MN, never more than 4-5 hours away, but it never worked out to go see it. I forgot it was passing back through Omaha on it’s way back west until a buddy brought it up so I was super excited that it worked out to go see it. Still really disappointed that I didn’t get to see it under power, but hopefully UP will keep doing tours and I can catch it someday.
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Pickup_man
> McMike
08/06/2019 at 11:50 |
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It’s the same model of train, the Big Boy, but t his particular one (4014) is the one that Union Pacific recently restored and is taking on tour around the west/mid west. The one that sits static in Omaha is # 4023. Only 25 were ever built, only 8 remain, and this (4014) is the only functioning example at the moment.
For Sweden
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 11:50 |
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looks steamy
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Pickup_man
> For Sweden
08/06/2019 at 11:50 |
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Sadly there was no steamin while I was there.
JustAnotherG6
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 12:17 |
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The sushi place wouldn’t happen to be Sushi Blue (or perhaps just ‘Blue’ now) would it?
If so, one of the owners is a good friend of my brothers and coincidentally a bit of a jalop with several P
orches
in his stable.
shop-teacher
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 12:22 |
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Cool trip! Too bad you couldn't see it in motion. I took my kids to see it when it rolled through my town a couple weeks ago. I didn't take a picture, choosing instead to just enjoy the moment. Totally worth it :)
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Pickup_man
> JustAnotherG6
08/06/2019 at 12:23 |
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That’s the one. Really nice place, really good sushi.
That’s awesome, small world...
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McMike
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 12:30 |
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Pickup_man
> McMike
08/06/2019 at 12:46 |
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Not really a train nerd, but the engineer in me loves the Big Boys (and steam trains in general) for their pure mechanical awesomeness.
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McMike
> Pickup_man
08/06/2019 at 13:13 |
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LOL.
You’re a bigger train nerd* than I am. That was an amazing answer.
You’re lucky didn’t call 4023 “The choo-choo on the hill”
* Railfan, sorry.
Where have all the lightweights gone?
> MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
08/06/2019 at 14:26 |
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I saw it as it went through Lombard, IL, on its way to its weekend resting place in West Chicago. I’ve been around quite a few steam locomotives, and this was by far the most amazing spectacle I’ve seen on rails.
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MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
> Where have all the lightweights gone?
08/06/2019 at 14:32 |
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Damn, you’re making me even more mad at myself lol.
I guess I have an excuse for a road trip though