RailScene USA Focus: The Great Salt Lake Flyover starring Challenger #3985 & Living Legend #844

With all the excitement in this year 2019 being over the return of the "Big Boy" here's an opportunity to look back 20 years to see its "Little Sister" in the form of the previous "largest working steam engine in the world" UP #3985 working a very similar train to the 4-8-8-4's train to Ogden for the 150th anniversary of the Overland Route. Unlike the Big Boy, the Challenger, together with the common pilot locomotive in the shape of what UP calls its "Living Legend", the Northern or 4-8-4 #844, and after spending two days on display in the yard at Ogden, proceeded to take to ex-SP metals to cross the famous Great Salt Lake causeway in order to go to Sacramento to the 1999 Railfair. We (my friend and travelling companion Bob Avery and I) took to the air in a helicopter - no drones then - in order to follow the train, starting with a sweep around the Ogden yards and then moving across to the start of the first portion of the causeway. This had replaced the original trestle based route across the lake in 1959, the original having supplanted the historic 1869 line over the hills north of the lake via Promontory as early as 1905. The route across the lake is known as the Lucin Cut-Off and cut 43 miles off the 1869 line through Promontory itself, although it still actually runs across the southernmost part at Promontory Point. The old line soldiered on until wartime needs claimed the steel from its roadbed and thoughts then were already looking to the eventual replacement of the 12 mile long wooden trestles across the north-western end of the lake. At the end of our flyover remnants of the old trestles can be seen as the train heads off onto the 1959 causeway. I have to confess to a few shots are a little shaky; the helicopter wasn't always totally stable and I had to cling onto the camera as well as my seat - and the sound track is just the sound of the rotor blades and engine. However, I find this angle very fascinating and I hope you do too. If you like this sort of thing, have a look at my Challenger Cab Ride, filmed the following day through the Humbolt and Palisades Canyons.