I am surprised that no one on this board has chased, photographed the UP movement of the Big Boy 4014 today. She moved DIT from West Colton to Yermo. There are photos elsewhere on the net of enormous crowds, who can't all be railfans. This is like the awakening of a dinosaur. This old steam curmudgeon has also learned that Doyle McCormack's (almost completely) restored ALCO PA, Nickel Plate 190, has been invited to, and will attend the big cab unit diesel fest at Spencer, NC. The 190 will accompany SP&S 4-8-4 700 to Portland, OR, Union Station for Amtrak Train Day on May 10, and from there be moved DIT to Spencer.
Big Boy, In Case You Missed It In case you missed it. http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/inland_empire&id=9519878 I hope this link still works for you. Enjoy! As requested: Here's the link for the schedule, for the Big Boy. Sorry, I don't have anything on what is happening north of me . http://www.up.com/aboutup/special_trains/steam/details.shtml Ken was kind enough to post this almost two weeks ago. Stay tuned.
Funny thing happened today. Back when Ken originally provided a link to the schedule I picked it up and sent out an e-mail to all the Bear Valley Model Railroaders. Two did respond almost immediately and thank me for the heads up. Today, the one I was waiting to see if he got his e-mail...... set across the table from me at CJ's and wanted to know why, I hadn't told him about the transfer? My response: It would help to pick-up your e-mails, if you'd be so inclined. Only one, present at the table bothered to read it and he thanked me for it. Verifying that I had sent out a notice. I said scratching my head in wonderment. On another note: For whatever reasons this website isn't heavily populated with railfans. We do well with the modelers but the true blue railfans seem to be participating elsewhere. Hope... if you live near the tracks you can get out and witness this fine locomotive in transit.
We have a number of Railfans here, but with a few notable exceptions, we do not have a lot of institutional knowledge or dedicated news people here. Other forums have far more participation from railroad workers both train crews and mgmt. But we don't lack for fans.
I'm flying from Minneapolis to Vegas tonight, partially to catch the 4014, partially because I work there.
My new camera came with a cool zoom lens but the locomotive is still too far away to get a good view from Texas. However, I have been tracking it on the UP web site. It is great about the PA going to Spencer, but I will have to miss that one too. I did get to see it in Portland a few years ago. I still think that some day after the novelty of the "Bluebird" paint scheme wears off it will again get painted in glorious red and silver warbonnet. How many different paint schemes has Doyle painted the 4449 in?
For those of you who are office or house bound, perhaps to far away to be there in person (and I hope this is ok to post here) a link to Trains, live streaming. You may need to register to see the LIVE footage. http://trn.trains.com/en/Union Pacific Big Boy/Webcam/2014/04/UP Big Boy Streaming Webcam.aspx Who said we don't have informed railfans on TrainBoard? It's just that we don't have a lot of them. I just tested the link and it works from this end. One more note: Don't expect this link to work after they shut it down. Not sure it will work for tomorrow's viewing pleasure. None the less you should be able to find your way back to their website. As of this posting: They appear to be in Yermo preparing to depart. Again Enjoy!
I believe part of the problem with seeming lack of railfans here, is many just silently sit back, read and enjoy. We have many, many fans and past/present employees or railroad industry workers here. Another aspect is those who are, (sadly), locked into one forum- Which I see every day. As an example I cannot tell you how many times I have had to move an ad to our sales area for someone, who has never scanned the site and didn't even know we had such a feature. Or how many times I have pointed people to other niches, or our Groups, and they are shocked to know such places here exist. They have only one forum bookmarked, and believe that is the extent of TrainBoard! (Yikes!!!!!!!!) Then we have people who are almost seemlingly fearful of going outside of a model scale to share or talk. They'll place a scale generic question in one forum, get few, if any, responses. Then I move it to the Inspection Pit, and all kinds of people from multiple scales will respond. Oh well. Meanwhile I, too, hope for the day when Doyle paints that PA to original colors.
Only one brief clip which I can find, so far, on YouTube: [video=youtube;bR_knE8SXI0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR_knE8SXI0[/video] Interesting the lead diesel is 4014...
Not to be critical of the boys at Trains, but some of the live stream leave's a lot to be desired. Here's the link: http://trn.trains.com/en/Union%20Pac...%20Webcam.aspx You may need to refresh it from time to time. Still you can enjoy in the fun as though you were privileged enough to ride along. Have fun! The chase is on.
As of this posting we seem to have lost our Train guys. The further they get out into the desert the more difficult it will become to send video streaming back to us, cell phone coverage being what it is. A phone call from a fellow railfan just pointed out Train Magazine, just made this a subscription day only. In other words subscribers to the Train Wig Wag, will be the only ones allowed to view the live streaming*. Oh well, it is what it is. Fun while it lasted.
It's a shame that Trains didn't piggy-back the video on a satellite feed instead of relying on cell towers. Even more shameful is that apparently nobody thought to check out the video links in the 5 months that Trains has been hyping this event. In amateur theater productions it's called a Dress Rehearsal when the Director can say "Gee, that ain't gonna work" and fix it before opening night.
