UP Big Boy Vid

#4014 ''movin out'' in August 21

Union Pacific Big Boy #4014 Steam Train Accelerating and Sanding Flues (8/27/21) - YouTube

We caught it twice this summer, going through the area.....................first time I've gotten to see it up close and personal.

rj1939 said:

We caught it twice this summer, going through the area.....................first time I've gotten to see it up close and personal.

Click to expand...

You lucky devil

Wonderful video, thanks for sharing!

Anyone notice how that cloud stayed with the engine for so long..?! At 1:00 point it looked like it was locked in.

Just an astounding machine.
I notice that the front drive wheel set is running opposite of the rear set.
When the crank is up on the front, it is down on the rears.
I wondered if this is coordinated thru valving, perhaps for balance?
I wondered if they were just random and if one set were to slip and if they would go out of sync.
It's hard to tell when they show the other side, because it is really roaring, but it looks there that they are synced the same up and up, down and down.

So I assume that the front and rear sets are independent, but then I wonder, are the axles solid or can right and left, of both front and rear, be adjusted for going around long curves, like a differential, or do they rely on slippage?

I haven't played with trains since I was six years old, but still fascinating!

Mike

We caught it at crossings out in the middle of nowhere, to avoid the mob. There are a lot of those in the Mississippi River bottom. Good line of sight, so you could see it coming for a good way too.

We passed by the site of two victims of the Railway Killer, it was next to a highway overpass and was a popular viewing place for #4014

Angel Maturino Resendiz - Wikipedia

Beautiful videography. Thank you for sharing.

It's interesting that as technology gets more and more sophisticated, it stirs the heart less and less.

Technology like the big boy gave way to the diesel-electric.

The peak technology that we're seeing in internal combustion vehicles giving way to quicker electric cars that can smoke the IC, but are boring.

Old time electronics with tubes and rotating elements giving way to solid state drives.

The video that automatically followed is old, but remarks on this feeling (at about 5:30):

Last of the Giants--Union Pacific Railroad - YouTube


P.S. Having worked for Kodak, I should have included film being replaced by the technology that allowed the beautiful video in post 1.

Mike, there is no direct connection between the front driver unit and the rear driver unit. The drivers are "quartered" on the axles (one side is 90 deg. out of "index" from the other so that from rest you always have a piston able to start rotation). The "cranks" you see are for the valve gear (it times the valves to the driver position). If one set of drivers breaks traction that would alter the relationship of the cranks between the two sets of valve gear with no effect on the other set of valve gear. The wheels are fixed on the axles. The tires are tapered from the flange on the inboard side of the wheel so that the O.D. is smaller on the outboard side. As the engine rounds a bend, the flanges on the wheels are "pushed" to the rail on the outside of the curve (by centrifugal force) so the difference in the effective diameters of the inside and outside wheels produce a "differential" effect. All the wheels on the engines and cars are tapered in this manner and it also "centralizes" the train on the rails when on a straight section. (One of the periodic maintenance procedures on the driving wheels is they are "turned & quartered" to keep the 90 degree indexing "constant"

Thanks for the video Sami.

Here's another one from 2019 with 844 tagging along.

UP Big Boy 4014, 844 at Stowe Creek, near Evanston, WY 5-13-19 - YouTube