What Union Pacific Never Told You About The 17 Big Boys They Destroyed

What Union Pacific Never Told You About The 17 Big Boys They Destroyed Twenty-five Big Boy locomotives were built. Eight survive. One runs. The question this video answers is what happened to the seventeen that did not — and why the answer is buried in a maintenance log rather than an official announcement. Union Pacific did not retire the Big Boys in July 1959 when the last revenue run ended in the dark in Wyoming. It stored them — operationally, with boilers maintained and running gear kept functional — for twenty-six months. That standstill was not standard decommissioning procedure. It was insurance. The railroad's mechanical department was running a parallel calculation the entire time: diesel and turbine reliability data against Wasatch traffic load against the monthly cost of keeping twenty-five machines in operational storage. In September 1961, that calculation produced a result. The scrap program began with Number 4015 and ended with Number 4011 in June 1963. Not one of the seventeen locomotives scrapped was condemned for mechanical failure. Each of the original twenty had accumulated over one million miles. Number 4006 had run 1,064,625 miles. The machines were not worn out. They were no longer the cheapest option. The gas turbine-electric locomotives that replaced them — David S. Neuhart's third-generation fleet of thirty units producing 8,500 horsepower each — ran their last revenue trip on December 26, 1969. Nine years after the scrap program began. The Veranda types, the second generation, were all retired by 1964. The current diesel on the former Wasatch corridor produces approximately 3,000 horsepower. Less than half of a Big Boy's 6,290 drawbar horsepower. Less than half of the 8,500 horsepower that justified the scrapping. The ALCO plant in Schenectady that built all twenty-five closed in January 1969. The manufacturing capability to build another Big Boy no longer exists in the United States. The plant was demolished in 2019 and replaced by a casino. Number 4014 is on its 2026 coast-to-coast eastern tour because Union Pacific spent six years restoring one. The other seventeen exist only as scrap value paid once, in 1961 and 1962, which was also permanent. Chapters: 00:00 The Maintenance Log 04:30 David S. Neuhart and the Machine He Inherited 09:30 The Gas Turbine Calculation 14:00 The 26-Month Standstill 17:30 The Scrap Record That Wasn't Written 20:30 The Arithmetic of the Decision References: Wes Barris. 4-8-8-4 Big Boy Steam Locomotives in the USA: Chronological Timeline. steamlocomotive.com Tim Walter. Every Union Pacific Big Boy Ever Built, In Photos. Steam Giants. steamgiants.com/big-boy/history/every-union-pacific-big-boy-loco/ Tim Walter. The Last Big Boys and Where to See Them. Steam Giants. steamgiants.com/big-boy/history/surviving-big-boy-locomotives/ Tim Walter. The Union Pacific Big Boy Story. Steam Giants. steamgiants.com/big-boy/history/union-pacific-big-boy-story/ Don Strack. Union Pacific MP&M Men, Biographical Information — D.S. Neuhart. utahrails.net/up/up-mpm-men.php Don Strack. Union Pacific Diesel Story, 1934–1982. utahrails.net/up/up-diesel-story-1934-1982.html Union Pacific Big Boy. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Big_Boy Union Pacific 4014. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_4014 Union Pacific GTELs. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_GTELs American Locomotive Company. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Locomotive_Company F. Nelson Blount. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Nelson_Blount A.J. Wolff. Giant Turbine and Diesel Locomotives After Big Boys. Trains Magazine. trains.com/ctr/railroads/locomotives/giant-turbine-and-diesel-locomotives-followed-union-pacifics-famous-big-boys/ Big Boy No. 4014. Union Pacific official. up.com/about-us/history/steam/big-boy-4014 William Kratville. Big Boy (book). Cited in steamlocomotive.com test data, April 1943. Union Pacific 18 GTEL. Illinois Railway Museum. irm.org/player/up18/ Marc Schultz. End of the line: ALCO completed final locomotives in 1969. Daily Gazette, Schenectady. January 11, 2019. Old Machine Press. Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy Locomotive. oldmachinepress.com/2016/12/20/union-pacific-4-8-8-4-big-boy-locomotive/ ALCo Site Historical Marker. HMDB. hmdb.org/m.asp?m=38348 ALCO Heritage Trail. Parks and Trails New York. ptny.org/newsandmedia Steam Giants. American Locomotive Company History. steamgiants.com/wiki/builders/american-locomotive-company-alco/