Big Boy 4-8-8-4 converted to oil from original coal.
Discussion
The sheer size and bulk of a Big Boy always catches me slightly unawares.
Not living with 'American scale' stuff every day, I always find myself thinking effectively "yeah, it's big, but how big can it be? It's got 5ft 8in driving wheels like a British mixed traffic steam engine. It's basically going to be like two 9Fs joined together, right?"
Then you see footage or photos of it alongside people or normal day-to-day things and you realise how absolutely massive it is, not just overall (but it is - it's 85ft long without the tender, and the tender by itself is longer than a complete BR Standard 2MT) but every part of it is hefty.
And you see people with their heads about level with the top of the driving wheels (and next to crosshead nuts the size of their head) and then realise that there are steam pipes and air reservoirs above them before you even get to the running board, and then there's a boiler the scale of an airliner fuselage above that, and sand domes on top of the boiler. The cylinders on the pair of Westinghouse air pumps (both with two cylinders and intercooled between the compression stages) are bigger than the main cylinders on a typical small British tank engine.
The sonic impact of one of these working hard at near-full cutoff dragging 4000 tons up Echo Canyon at 12mph or over Sherman Summit with 6000 tons on the drawbar must have been incredible. They need the collapsible smokestack hood to stop the exhaust blast damaging the roof lining of tunnels as they go.
It's something of a shame that UP will (quite understandably) never really put No. 4014 to any true work to give people a chance to hear that again. You get some sense of it when it's filmed working over Donner Pass or when it's accelerating away from a stop, but that's different to sixteen drive wheels, four cylinders and two blastpipes giving their all at 14" back pressure and 20mph.
I'm guessing this is why they can get away with oil firing now. It was tried in the 1940s but it wasn't possible to get sufficient heating rates from one burner in such a large firebox, so they went back to coal firing with mechanised stoking and steam-jet distribution. But with No. 4014 basically kept on light duties now, that's less of a concern.
Not living with 'American scale' stuff every day, I always find myself thinking effectively "yeah, it's big, but how big can it be? It's got 5ft 8in driving wheels like a British mixed traffic steam engine. It's basically going to be like two 9Fs joined together, right?"
Then you see footage or photos of it alongside people or normal day-to-day things and you realise how absolutely massive it is, not just overall (but it is - it's 85ft long without the tender, and the tender by itself is longer than a complete BR Standard 2MT) but every part of it is hefty.
And you see people with their heads about level with the top of the driving wheels (and next to crosshead nuts the size of their head) and then realise that there are steam pipes and air reservoirs above them before you even get to the running board, and then there's a boiler the scale of an airliner fuselage above that, and sand domes on top of the boiler. The cylinders on the pair of Westinghouse air pumps (both with two cylinders and intercooled between the compression stages) are bigger than the main cylinders on a typical small British tank engine.
The sonic impact of one of these working hard at near-full cutoff dragging 4000 tons up Echo Canyon at 12mph or over Sherman Summit with 6000 tons on the drawbar must have been incredible. They need the collapsible smokestack hood to stop the exhaust blast damaging the roof lining of tunnels as they go.
It's something of a shame that UP will (quite understandably) never really put No. 4014 to any true work to give people a chance to hear that again. You get some sense of it when it's filmed working over Donner Pass or when it's accelerating away from a stop, but that's different to sixteen drive wheels, four cylinders and two blastpipes giving their all at 14" back pressure and 20mph.
I'm guessing this is why they can get away with oil firing now. It was tried in the 1940s but it wasn't possible to get sufficient heating rates from one burner in such a large firebox, so they went back to coal firing with mechanised stoking and steam-jet distribution. But with No. 4014 basically kept on light duties now, that's less of a concern.
Back in 2017 i did the 'grand tour' of the US to vist some transport museums esp to see as many Big Boys as possible
Flew to San Francisco, drove to see the elephant seals, and the Giant sequoas, the to Sacremento,
Back to SFO flew to Denver drove to Cheyenne got a tour of the UP workshops by Ed dicken!! 3 big boys!!
Back to Denver Flew to Chicago drove to Green Bay n the A4 and Big Boy 4 back to Chicago and ashort ride of the L
The pane to ST louis for that museum Big Boy 5
Then off to Montreal to se the other A4 over there
Flew to Washington did Horseshoe curve and Pennsylvania museum with the GG1 locos at Stasburhg, also a preseved line on other side of road
From there to Baltimore museum Down to Roanoke to see the stuff down there and droppedin on 2 small preserved lines
Back to Washinton for the Sithsonian museum where there is a lot of space suff, and finally the fantastic air museum just off the airport .flew to New york for Grand Central station then home
Re the Big Boys size here is a picture of 5'8 me against 4014 tender, which was still in the process of being restored
Flew to San Francisco, drove to see the elephant seals, and the Giant sequoas, the to Sacremento,
Back to SFO flew to Denver drove to Cheyenne got a tour of the UP workshops by Ed dicken!! 3 big boys!!
Back to Denver Flew to Chicago drove to Green Bay n the A4 and Big Boy 4 back to Chicago and ashort ride of the L
The pane to ST louis for that museum Big Boy 5
Then off to Montreal to se the other A4 over there
Flew to Washington did Horseshoe curve and Pennsylvania museum with the GG1 locos at Stasburhg, also a preseved line on other side of road
From there to Baltimore museum Down to Roanoke to see the stuff down there and droppedin on 2 small preserved lines
Back to Washinton for the Sithsonian museum where there is a lot of space suff, and finally the fantastic air museum just off the airport .flew to New york for Grand Central station then home
Re the Big Boys size here is a picture of 5'8 me against 4014 tender, which was still in the process of being restored
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