Western Railroad Discussion > World's Largest Locomotive is...

...is on free public display Feb 8 and 9 from 9am to 4pm at 19100 Slover Ave, Bloomington, CA in the rail classification yards. Union Pacific UPP 4014, a 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" can be viewed close up cold before it is pulled by diesels in a special train under 35 mph up Cajon pass, through Barstow, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Ogden to Cheyenne for a multi-year restoration by the UP at their steam shops. Later it will pull vintage passenger coaches around the UP system, including California, hopefully offering public excursions. 25 were built near 1941, it retired in 1959, it is one of 8 left on display, it was displayed at Fairplex, Pomona since 1962, and it burns coal but will be converted to heavy oil. Length is 133 feet and weight is 1.2 million pounds under steam.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/14 07:19 by Spikes.

WOW!!!! I didn't know that. ?????????? ;-)

No it isn't, the biggest locomotives in the world are in Dearborn, MI and Baltimore, MD.

It all depends what you mean by "biggest". Most common folk (non-railfans) I think would consider length with tender over coupler faces--length does matter you see--so I think Big Boy has it. Of course eastern railfans would never accept this, still living in a fantasy world that the earth ends with Chicago. Well at least that's better than ending in NJ as The New Yorker would have it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/14 08:32 by railwaybaron.

Just to resume a decades-old debate, what about the Missabe "Yellowstones?"

- Jeff

It isn't how big it is, it's how you use it.

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

Well in that case, Big Boy could do it at 80 MPH!

Of all the "Big Boy" facts I've read over the years, the one that made my eyes pop out was that of when operating at peak horsepower (around 45 mph) the firebox consumed 500 pounds of coal a minute! Good thing stokers were invented.

So in four minutes, a fireman would have to shovel a ton of coal? Yeah, automatic stokers must have been nice!

Stan

> length with tender over coupler faces--length does
> matter you see--so I think Big Boy has it.

Far as anyone knows the longest-including-tender
recip steam locomotive was the 6-4-4-6.

When I visited the B&O Museum a few years back they claim the highest horsepower loco was the C&O 1604 but I have not seen a comparison of weight, length, and horsepower that would be interesting to see between it and a Big Boy.

As far as moving gross tonnage quickly across a railroad, a Big Boy would be hard to beat.

Stan

The Trains magazine article from a few years ago would seem to indicate that if HONESTLY weighed, the C&O would outweigh the Big Boy. That says nothing about which was the more useful loco though.

C&O No.1604 "Allegheny"

2-6-6-6 Allegheny (simple articulated) / Class: C&O Class H-8
Manufactured by: Lima Locomotive Works / December 1941
Locomotive Weight: 389 tons / Driver Diameter: 67 inches
Cylinders: 22 ½ x 33 inches (4) / Tractive Effort: 110,200 lbs
Maximum Drawbar Horsepower: 7498 (peak), 7325 (sustained)

The locomotive had a 109-inch wide boiler, which was 2 inches larger than the "Big Boy" locomotive and a fire box that was so large it required a six-wheel trailing truck to support it. The locomotive only had six axles, instead of the usual eight. This new 2-6-6-6 locomotive was known as the "Allegheny" after the mountains it was designed to conquer.

The "Allegheny" locomotives were quite successful pulling slow coal drags through the mountains, but they could also travel as fast as 60 miles per hour pulling occasional passenger trains. By the end of 1948, there were 60 of the 2-6-6-6 locomotives on the C&O's roster.
The No. 1604 was one of two "Alleghenies" that escaped from scrapping. In 1986, the No. 1604 was transferred to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. The other "Allegheny," No. 1601, resides at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Since the subject said "World's Largest Locomotive" and not World's Largest Steam Locomotive, I would nominate UP turbines 18 and 26.

Steve

SGillings Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Since the subject said "World's Largest
> Locomotive" and not World's Largest Steam
> Locomotive, I would nominate UP turbines 18 and
> 26.

I saw the EMD FT demonstrator (an A-B-B-A drawbar-connected set) included in these sweepstakes once, as this was considered a single locomotive.

Ray

sagehen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As far as moving gross tonnage quickly across a
> railroad, a Big Boy would be hard to beat.
>
> Stan

Apples and oranges ... eastern roads don't have the wide open space that the west has ...

The title says "world's". Did nobody else make an engine to compare with US engines? How about the Russians? After all, they invented everything and made them bigger than anyone else, back in the USSR days. (Especially after they obtained a hunk of US lend-lease equipment to copy and/or modify.)

Wikipedia shows the Big Boy and the Allegheny of C&O and Virginian as the Largest by weight, of any Locomotives, worldwide.

Well, we need to restore the 1604 so we can find out which one performs better :)

Tom