Historic Union Pacific Big Boy photos

The front half of Big Boy No. 4005 forms a wall of steel above a hostler at the Laramie, Wyo., engine terminal in August 1957.

Battling up Sherman Hill, Big Boy No. 4011 exits the north tunnel at Hermosa, Wyo., with an eastbound freight in August 1957.

Big Boy No. 4012 – today displayed at Steamtown in Scranton, Pa. – leaves Laramie, Wyo., with an eastbound in September 1957. The smoke in the background is from No. 4006, ready to follow the 4012.

Big Boy No. 4014, en route to its display site at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, dwarfs a pair of Southern Pacific Geeps at Bassett, Calif., on Pacific Electric’s Baldwin Park Branch in January 1962.

Big Boy No. 4014 is at Bassett, Calif., on Pacific Electric’s Baldwin Park Branch in January 1962 during its move to the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.

A retouched Union Pacific publicity image from the early 1940s features Big Boy No. 4019. The original Kodachrome photograph has far less smoke and steam.

In this iconic image, a Big Boy symbolizes steam power on Wyoming’s Sherman Hill in the late 1950s.

At Dale, Wyo., where the “old” (ca. 1900) and “new” (1953) Sherman Hill lines diverge, Big Boy No. 4005 heads east toward Cheyenne in the late afternoon sun of Oct. 31, 1956. Today this engine is preserved at Denver’s Forney Museum.

Mail and express train 28 departs Rawlins behind 4-8-4 No. 843 a few minutes after 2 p.m. on Oct. 29, 1956. In the background, behind Big Boy No. 4018 (today preserved in Texas), an eastbound freight with F3’s and a GP9 for power will follow on the block of No. 28.

An overhead view at Green River in October 1956 shows new diesels and turbines sharing the engine terminal tracks with a single 4000, as Union Pacific men called their Big Boys, just in from Rawlins, 134 miles to the east. At this time Green River was the farthest western terminal for the Big Boys.

Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy No. 4013, its throttle wide open and its stoker pouring in coal, struggles toward Wyoming’s Hermosa Tunnel with a westbound freight under the low-hanging clouds of a damp May 9, 1954.

Low morning sun and an overcast sky produced dramatic cross-lighting of Big Boy No. 4017, just starting to pull west out of Rawlins, Wyo. One of eight surviving Big Boys (of 25 built), No. 4017 is now at the National Railway Museum in Green Bay, Wis.

Big Boy No. 4014, soon to be restored, climbs Wyoming’s Sherman Hill, behind helper No. 4021, on June 25, 1949.