Nick Chillianis posted:GG1 4877 posted:I'm hoping to see the Big Boy in Arizona one day. If the 844 could make the "0-27" curve through Tempe, perhaps the 4014 could as well? The 844 came a few months early for our state Centennial celebration in late 2011. Amazing to watch it run at speed out in the rural part of the county. At my spritely age of a mere 50 I've been around a lot of live steam but never anything that went much more than 25mph. To see the 844 run at 50-60 mph was something I never thought I'd witness.
Has the 4014 been restored to the level that it can run close to it's original speeds? Wasn't that about 80mph?
Big Boy was never operated at 80 MPH. Her reciprocating and revolving machinery was over-engineered for 80 MPH to provide a safety factor to prevent failures in the normal operating range. Freight train speeds during the period when Big Boy ruled the roost topped out at 50 MPH. That's plenty fast enough to move manifest trains and reefer blocks. Much of Big Boy's time was spent slogging it out at 12 - 15 MPH, ascending mountain grades. The fast running was mainly on the downgrades and only where conditions allowed. One of the places they really rolled was descending the west slope of Sherman Hill from Tie Siding to Laramie.
The Pentrex Big Boys video shows a Big Boy running down the grade at Red Buttes, Wyoming at over 60 mph. The most recent Classic Trains magazine has an article about a third batch of oil-fired Big Boys for LA & SL line on the UP (never built) in which a fireman was quoted saying that a Big Boy could keep a 5600 ton freight train rolling on the line between Milford and Lynndyl at 60mph, 65 if pushed.
