Union Pacific Big Boy: Unstoppable but Built for a Dying Era

Описание: Union Pacific Big Boy: Unstoppable but Built for a Dying Era

The Big Boy could pull a train a mile and a half long up a mountain pass, but by the time the last one rolled out of the factory, the thing it was built to haul was already disappearing. Most people either worship this locomotive as the pinnacle of steam engineering or see it as a monument to industrial stubbornness. I personally think it's the greatest steam locomotive ever built for a job that shouldn't have existed in the first place. I wonder what a Big Boy equivalent would be today, maybe autonomous trucks purpose-built for a fuel we're phasing out.

So basically back in 1940, Union Pacific has a problem. Sherman Hill, Wyoming. A 1.55% grade stretching across forty-plus miles between Cheyenne and Laramie, right over the Continental Divide. The current solution was double-heading 4-8-8-4s, running two locomotives per train, or just cutting trains in half and making two trips. With wartime freight volumes ramping up in 1940 and 1941, this wasn't just inefficient, it was becoming impossible. Union Pacific's directive to ALCO was simple. We need one locomotive that can do the work of two. The constraint was that it had to work with existing infrastructure, turntables, bridges, water towers, all of it. And here's the thing. While other railroads were already experimenting with diesels, UP doubled down on steam...

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