F. Nelson Blount discovered that in order to acquire the locomotive, it had to be registered to a non-profit organization. He originally worked out an agreement with the state of New Hampshire to include it as part of an agreement to establish a state railroad museum; the deal fell through. Blount moved his collection of railroad equipment to Bellows Falls, Vermont, where he established Steamtown USA as a non-profit museum so that Union Pacific could donate it. If Blount had not formed Steamtown USA to acquire "Big Boy", who knows what would have happened to his equipment after his death in 1967. It might have been broken up with the rest of his estate instead of living in Vermont for twenty years to have run. moving to Scranton and becoming the seed of the Steamtown National Historic Site.
Ultimately, every railway line faces the same problem: how do you transport trains over mountains? Small logging and mining railroads purchased geared locomotives – Heislers, Climaxes and Shays – that could pull trains up steep hills at low speed. Midsize railroads, such as the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, purchased many midsize locomotives—4-6-2s, 4-8-2s, and 4-8-4s—and placed as many as ten locomotives on a train. Major railroads such as the Union Pacific Railroad, which ran from Kansas City, Missouri and Omaha, Nebraska to Seattle, Washington and Los Angeles, California, preferred a different solution. Union Pacific ordered larger, more powerful engines such as the 4-12-2 Union Pacific type and 4-6-6-4 Challengers. The trend toward size and power culminated in the 1.2 million pound, 6,200 horsepower 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy".
“Big Boys” are built for power. They did the work with three smaller locomotives, pulling freight trains of 120 cars and 3,800 tons at a speed of 40 miles per hour in the mountains of Utah and Wyoming.
However, with power comes weight: larger cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, boiler and combustion chamber. Steam locomotive manufacturers added more wheels with tension wheels and driven drive wheels.
The extra wheels provided extra length. Long bikes struggled to get around the circuit's tight turns, especially in the mountains. A Swiss designer, Anatole Mallet (1837-1919) added a "hinge" to the center of a locomotive so that it could "bend" slightly. Two pairs of cylinders supplied power to the two sets of drive wheels.
Although the "Big Boys" were built in Schenectady, New York by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) to Union Pacific's design, none ever operated off Union Pacific premises. ALCO delivered the first batch of 20 (out of an order of 25) to Union Pacific - including No. 4012 now in the Steamtown NHS collection - in 1941, and the remaining 5 locomotives in 1944.
The "Big Boys" had installed over a mile of pipes and flues in the boiler. Their firebox grate was 150 square feet in size. The "Big Boys" had sixteen drive wheels, each 68 inches. From coupling to coupling they measured 132 feet 9 inches. The tender contained 24,000 gallons of water and 28 tons of coal, and the engine and tender weighed 1,189,500 pounds in working order. The engines were given the name "Big Boy", which was written on one of the drive rods by an unknown employee at ALCO.
The 25 "Big Boys" were built to transport long, fast freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains in Utah and Sherman Hill in Wyoming. They served there until 1959, when the new diesel-electric locomotives took over. "Big Boy" #4012 was retired by Union Pacific in 1962 when F. Nelson Blount put it on display at his former museum in Bellows Falls, Vermont. It was displayed non-operatively there until 1984, when it was moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania. The "Big Boys" were not the most powerful engines, although they were the heaviest. But no bike ever came close to the 'Big Boys' combination of speed, power and agility.
