What makes Big Boy No. 4014 special?
The American Locomotive Company assembled 25 Big Boys as an exclusive commission for Union Pacific. The first locomotive was delivered to Union Pacific in 1941.
Big Boy No. 4014 and its contemporaries hauled heavy equipment from Ogden, Utah to and between Cheyenne, Wyoming, during the war effort. In 1961, Big Boy No. 4014 retired after racking up more than 1 million miles.
Measuring 133 feet long, Big Boy No. 4014 is more than half the size of a Boeing 747. The boiler alone contains more than a mile of tubes and flues. Its size made it a tourist attraction. The locomotive eventually found a home at the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona, California.
Just eight Big Boys remain in existence. In 2019, Union Pacific reacquired the locomotive from the museum and restored it. No. 4014 is the only Big Boy still chugging along the tracks today. The seven others remain on display across the United States.
“That’s really part of America: the train,” Mike Parker, 55, said. “That’s what got the west connected. That’s what created time zones, all these different things.”
Mike Parker brought his daughter and her friend to see the Big Boy chug through Pottstown. (Kenny Cooper/WHYY)
What’s next for Big Boy after Philly?
Steam billowed out from the locomotive as it approached Pottstown on Thursday afternoon. Spectators unleashed a round of applause and Big Boy No. 4014 responded with an even louder whistle.
“We’re not ‘train people,’ but it was just a curiosity being from Pottstown and seeing this come through,” Julie Laum, 47, said, adding that she loved seeing her neighbors together as a community.
Laum said the delays actually granted her and her daughter Emilie Laum, 18, an opportunity to explore Pottstown, eat at The Blue Elephant and bond with one another. She said the wait in the heat didn’t go to waste.
“Worth it,” Emilie Laum said. “Definitely worth it.”
Vincent DeJohn, 37, said the heat was not going to stop him from seeing “a marvel of American engineering.”
“As a person who loves engineering, who worked on helicopters, who knows what physical and engineering marvels are, here we are and we’re seeing this,” DeJohn said. “And this is just a feat of American engineering and here it stopped right in front of me. And I get to see it — and I get to appreciate it.”
Big Boy No. 4014’s east coast voyage on Norfolk Southern’s tracks includes eight display events in major U.S. cities, totaling more than 50 stops across 10 states.
Philadelphia will be the last eastbound stop before the giant locomotive heads back west to Cheyenne, Wyoming.
A young train fan greets the massive steam locomotive as it chugs into Pottstown on July 2, 2026. (Kenny Cooper/WHYY)
