It was a hot day at the Laramie Railroad Depot. The crowd was restless. The trains, true to form, were running late.
Suddenly, the crowd fell quiet. Parents turned from conversation, children stopped playing to look. The sound of steam filled the air, drowning out the roar of the crowd. The largest steam train in the world had arrived.
“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said Doug Christman, a train aficionado from Minnesota. “It really is like nothing else on earth.”
Christman drove all the way from Minneapolis to see the Big Boy 4014 speed through Laramie. The world’s largest commercial steam engine came through town on Saturday on its way to Ogden, Utah, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad.
Locomotive fans from all across the country came to southeast Wyoming to see the first run of this train after it spent 60 years languishing in a California museum. Union Pacific spent five years restoring the Big Boy to its former glory so that it would be ready for this event.
“It takes in air, it breathes out steam. It breathes just like an animal does,” said Charles Van Heule, who hosted the event for the Laramie Railroad Depot, about the allure of Big Boy 4014. “When you see it go by, it seems like a living thing. It’s also huge, its firebox is the size of a sedan. To see that much power, there’s something special about it.”
Van Heule estimated that 3,000 people visited the Depot to see the refurbished Big Boy’s maiden voyage. He joked that Depot engineers did weight tests on the footbridge spanning the tracks to make sure it wouldn’t collapse during the steam engine’s visit.
“For a usual steam engine, people are packed three deep on that bridge to try to get a good picture,” he said.
For Big Boy visitors were packed five deep. On the ground fans scaled the chain-link fence surrounding the tracks to get a better view. Some forward-thinking guests arrived as early as 7 a.m. to reserve premium spots. Crowds lined up as far south as the I-80 overpass and as far north as Safeway to get an unobstructed view of Big Boy.
The train arrived late, missing its 12:30 p.m. arrival time by about a half hour. As such, the gathered crowd had less time than expected to marvel at Big Boy before it steamed off towards Rawlins. Though the event was unexpectedly cut short, those in attendance were awe-struck by the train.
“This is one of those things that you tell your grandkids about, those memories that last a lifetime,” said Christman. “When that train went by, I had a feeling that I’d only felt before when I saw that solar eclipse a couple years ago. A feeling of just, ‘I’m seeing something real special here.’”
For those that missed it the first time, Big Boy will be back in Laramie on Friday, May 17 at 12:45 pm on its way back to Cheyenne. From there, the future of the train is still undecided.
For now Big Boy will wait in the Union Pacific Steam Shop in Cheyenne, waiting for the chance to amaze crowds once again.
