You are correct. The BigBoys were designed in the 30’s for Union Pacific. They were designed as 4-8-8-4’s as opposed to the Santa Fe 3751 which is a 4-8-4. The BigBoys had two sets of 8 driving wheels. They were designed to pull a 3600 ton train across a 1.14% grade. Top speed was around 80mph.
My Grandfather worked for Southern Pacific for nearly 25 years. He was an engineer on the Houston to El Paso route. He ran mostly freight as opposed to the passenger Sunset limited.
Lots of great stories he could tell. Thankfully I managed to get most of them on tape before he passed away. His name was Rabbit because he liked to run fast. He started out as a brakeman but eventually worked his way up to engineer. I still have several of his old log books and watches. There is a lot of history there.
Its good to see the Santa Fe 3751 back up and running.
Very cool. One of my great uncles was an engineer on the Wabash line. His “claim to fame” was that one day during WWII, he was running a troop train. He was backing the train into St. Louis Union Station, and his brakeman, who was drunk, forgot to hang the brake lantern out to stop the train, so my great uncle ended up backing the train right into the station. The cars at the end apparently went up onto the platform, and into the Station building itself. Needless to say, as the engineer and therefore responsible for the rest of the crew on his train, he lost his job.