the middle one, found in the Smithsonian (Museum of American History) weighs in at over half a million pounds.
Posted on 02/10/2005 4:02:38 PM PST by franksolich
Okay, so I am sitting around after work, at peace with the world and seeking argument from no one, when I learn that the famous 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" steam locomotives of the Union Pacific were NOT the largest in the world.
I am confused, because every book I have about railways insists the "Big Boys" were the largest steam locomotives, ever, in the world.
But the the Guiness Book of World Records throws a loop, insisting that in 1916 the Virginian Railway had a 2-8-8-8-4-6 locomotive, and that between 1914 and 1929, the Erie Railroad ran a freight train using a 2-8-8-8-2 locomotive.
The wheel-arrangements suggest steam locomotives much larger than the enormous "Big Boy," but while I have over 400 books about railroads, circa 1830-1970, there are no suggestions in any of them, that these serpentine steam locomotives ever existed; only the apparently unanimous agreement that the 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy"s of the Union Pacific were the largest steam locomotives, period.
Perhaps these two mentioned by that world-records book were experimental, or one-time models (as compared with the few ddozen 4-8-8-4s built for the Union Pacific during the 1940s)?
Ping for your husband who knows a great deal more about things than I do.
So I looked it up, sir; that web-site has a lot of information on it. Apparently the "Big Boys" are considered the "largest," because they were the largest in general standard customary use (during the 1940s and 1950s), while the other ostensibly larger ones were one-of-a-kind models and try-outs.
I hate to tell you what came up when I tried Googling this; the sites gave nowhere the information the site you recommended did.
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the middle one, found in the Smithsonian (Museum of American History) weighs in at over half a million pounds.
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