I’d love to see that up close. The closest I was to a steamer that big was in my office just outside Dresden Germany. We heard that thing a mile away and the ground shook. The smell of the steam and coal was intoxication.
“The smell of the steam and coal was intoxication.”
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Sadly, the Big Boy has been converted to burn heavy oil and not coal. The former coal-tender now carries an astonishing amount of heavy oil and not coal anymore.
Environmental and fire concerns, with a little recycling tossed in for the greenies.
Coal burners made a lot of smoke and smog. Oil burners are more efficient and comply with voluminous environmental regulations gifted to us for decades by commies/dems and rinos.
The real problem in the West is wherever the coal burning locomotives ran, they belched glowing embers onto the Plains and started lots of brush-fires.
For the greenies, the oil burned in the Big Boy is used, filtered oil from the modern Diesel-Electrics. Thus recycling something that would have normally been discarded.
I just hope the UP accounting department keeps funding the steam program at higher levels in the future to keep these on the rails!