Union Pacific 4014: Big Boy Goes East (Fort Wayne to Bellevue)

In the summer of 2026, Union Pacific's ambitious Coast to Coast steam tour made history as Big Boy 4014 left home rails for Norfolk Southern territory, becoming the first of its class to ever run East of Chicago. By the first weekend of June, the train was steaming across Indiana and Ohio down the old Nickel Plate Road mainline. Having last seen the Big Boy on the Western Pacific in Portola, California, it was a surreal sight to see it again amongst the grain silos of Fort Wayne, Indiana. As the train prepared to depart, the skies were just as foreboding as they had been in the Feather River Canyon, and soon a short but torrential downpour would strike the waiting crowd and destroy my main camera, forcing me to shoot the bulk of this video on my phone. The massive 4-8-8-4 was, of course, undeterred by the rain and was soon rolling towards its next stop in Bellevue, Ohio. Conveniently, while the Big Boy would spend the entire following day inaccessible to the public at a private event for Norfolk Southern employees, Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 Berkshire 765 was running excursions nearby on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, making for an all around Nickel Plated weekend. Huge thanks to Matthias Day for accompanying me on this trip and providing some extra footage for the video.