Item #7517
14"x17" original painting, mixed media, matted and framed. Signed lower left. 1989. It was left up to the Union Pacific to pull out the last straw in locomotive design when, in 1941, the UP commissioned the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) to build a steam engine of super proportions. It would be one of the last orders placed by the Union Pacific for steam power.
Big Boy's job was to haul 4000 ton freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains without assistance. The end product rolled off the assembly line in September of 1941--the first of twenty units numbered 4000 to 4019. Because of the war effort and the great surge of freight traffic of those years, the UP ordered five more of the Big Boys in 1944, thus making the 4020-4024 the last new steamers on the railroad
The dimensions of these twenty-five engines were stupendous when one compares any other steam locomotive group ever constructed in the world. They were one hundred and thirty-one feet long, weighed more than six hundred tons with tender and developed over 6000 horsepower. The divisions over which these monsters operated had to be totally realigned in order for the Big Boys to clear passing trains on curves, tunnels, and bridges.
The last of the lot, Number 4024, is illustrated while being walked into the yard at Cheyenne, Wyoming, where most of these big engines were serviced and repaired. The 4024 darkens the sky with coal smoke in 1958, the last year of operation for this mammoth engine. Eight of these giants have been preserved and are on display in various parts of the country.
