Union Pacific Big Boy #4014

Union Pacific recently purchased one of their Big Boy locomotives, a massive 4-8-8-4 articulated steam engine, from a park in southern California.  In late April and early May, the engine was moved from California to Cheyenne, Wyoming, for restoration.  Once restoration is complete, it will join the Challenger #3985 and the Northern #844 in Union Pacific's steam program.  While on the move, the Big Boy was put on display in various towns along the way, including Salt Lake City, UT and Ogden, UT.  I was still living in the area then, and I was able to go up to Ogden to see the engine on the day it was on display there.

The Big Boys were designed for Union Pacific's steep mountain grades between Ogden, UT and Green River, WY.  In modern days, when more horsepower is needed, more locomotives are put on the train and cables are connected between them so that one train crew can control all the locomotives from the lead locomotive.  In areas where helper engines are needed, these are put on the back of the train and usually have their own crew.  Steam engines, by nature, can't do that.  Every engine on a train has to have its own crew.  That is why, in steam days, you rarely saw doubleheaded trains.  Both engines had to have their own crew, and had to rely on whistle signals to let each other know what they were doing.  This was inconvenient, and Union Pacific didn't like doing it on their line between Green River and Ogden.

Thus the Big Boy was born.  UP wanted a locomotive that could pull a train on that line without help.  They had a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, meaning they had two sets of eight driving wheels each.  They burned coal, but the 4005 was later converted to burn oil, but the conversion was poorly designed and did not work properly.  The design has been improved since then, and like the other two engines in UP's steam program, the 4014 will be converted to burn oil.  They were built by American Locomotive Company, the first twenty (4000-4019) were built in 1941 and five more (4020-4024) were built in 1944.  They earned their nickname when a worker at the ALCo plant in Schenectady, NY wrote "Big Boy" on the front of one of the engines as it was under construction.  The nickname stuck, and today that is what everyone knows this design by.  The locomotives were not in service long, as diesels began taking over shortly after they were built, and the last one ran July 21, 1959.

Below are some of the photos I shot in Ogden, for a full album visit our facebook page.

For the rest of the photos, please visit the photo album on our facebook page.  If you have not "liked" our page, search for "Ogden Brothers Trains" on facebook and you will find it.

Marmaray Tunnel

A few days ago, on October 29th, 2013, a new railroad tunnel opened in Turkey, called the Marmaray Tunnel. Normally, we do not talk much about current rail industry events, and even more rare is mention of foreign rail industry news, however the Marmaray Tunnel is globally significant for several reasons. Most significant perhaps is the fact that the Marmaray Tunnel is the first intercontinental railroad tunnel, linking Europe with Asia.

The Marmaray Tunnel is an underwater tunnel just north of the Sea of Marmara. It crosses under the Bosphorus Strait and connects two parts of Istanbul, Turkey. At nearly 200 feet below the surface of the sea, it is the world's deepest immersed tube type tunnel. It is about 8.5 miles long and consists of two single track tunnels. The railroad line is standard gauge and is electrified using an overhead catenary.

The tunnel had some engineering challenges, due partly to the length and the location. Being underwater, there was some concern that if a tunnel wall sprung a leak, it could potentially flood the entire tunnel and cripple the rail system. In order to minimize this risk, each section of the tunnel was built from waterproof concrete, which is coated with a steel shell. Each section of the tunnel is independently watertight, and there are floodgates between sections which can be closed to isolate any leakage to just a single section. This is all important because the tunnel is located within 11 miles of the North Anatolian Fault, and geologists have estimated that the chance of an earthquake of a magnitude in excess of 7.0 in the next 30 years is over 75 percent. Additionally, the soil on which the tunnel is resting has been known to liquefy during major earthquakes, so industrial concrete was pumped into the soil to a depth of about 80 feet to help stabilize the foundation for the tunnel.

Currently the tunnel is only handling passenger trains serving Istanbul. Tunnel administrators are entertaining the possibility of using the tunnel for freight traffic, though no official plans to do so have been published at this time. If freight traffic were allowed to use the tunnel, it would be conceivable for freight to move by rail from Beijing to London.

Marmaray Tunnel is part of a larger project which involves building regional commuter rail lines around Istanbul, and improving existing commuter rail and subway lines, and building new rolling stock for these rail lines. When the project is complete, the entire rail line will be about 47 miles long and include 37 surface stations and three underground stations. When the project is complete, trains will be able to run as frequently as every two minutes. The section of the line that opened on October 29 includes just four stations, and the rest of the line is expected to be operating by 2015.

The tunnel was originally started in 2004, and was planned to be completed in 2009. The completion of the tunnel was delayed four years primarily by numerous archaeological discoveries made within the areas being excavated. These archaeological finds had to be carefully preserved and removed before the project was allowed to continue. Some artifacts dated back over 8,000 years, and there were discoveries made from almost every era of the area's history.