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Big Boy, Union Pacific’s 600-ton locomotive No. 4014, sits in a rail yard Wednesday in Parsons, Kan., for an overnight stop on the train’s monthlong tour of the central and southern U.S. The train is headed for Houston and New Orleans, with a daylong stop in Fort Worth, Texas, on Aug. 14. It will return home through Arkansas and Missouri, heading for a daylong stop in St. Louis on Sunday, Aug. 29, then crossing Missouri for its second daylong stop at Kansas City’s Union Station on Wednesday. Sept. 1.

A common sight when riding in Big Boy, onlookers gather Wednesday at a crossing in Martin City, Mo., as Union Pacific engine No. 4014 passes by. The company publishes the train’s schedule online so groups will gather at crossings on the route to see the massive steam engine. GLOBE | JOHN HACKER

Big Boy, Union Pacific’s 600-ton locomotive No. 4014, sits in a rail yard Wednesday in Parsons, Kan., for an overnight stop on the train’s monthlong tour of the central and southern U.S. The train is headed for Houston and New Orleans, with a daylong stop in Fort Worth, Texas, on Aug. 14. It will return home through Arkansas and Missouri, heading for a daylong stop in St. Louis on Sunday, Aug. 29, then crossing Missouri for its second daylong stop at Kansas City’s Union Station on Wednesday. Sept. 1.

PARSONS, Kan. — The largest steam locomotive in the world, Union Pacific Railroad’s Big Boy, drew an estimated 1,000 visitors to the Crawford Street railroad crossing Wednesday and Thursday.

Parsons was a planned overnight stop for Union Pacific’s steam locomotive No. 4014 on a monthlong tour of the central and southern U.S. this week, the first for either of the railroad’s operational steam locomotives since the pandemic began.

Parsons Mayor Tom Shaw said it was fitting that an iconic steam locomotive made an appearance this year.

“Any time this would be neat, but this is the 150th anniversary of the founding of Parsons, and Parsons is a railroad town. The railroad is why the town is here,” Shaw said as he walked with other city leaders to tour the train. “The UP has been a pretty good partner with Parsons and cooperates with the city in a lot of ways, so it’s been nice to have the train come through. I’m a big train fan anyway, so I love it.”

The locomotive has already thrilled untold numbers of train lovers since Aug. 5, when it left its home base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

This Joplin Globe reporter got the chance of a lifetime on Wednesday to ride in Big Boy’s cab with the engineer, firemen and members of the crew for four hours from Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, to Paola.

Big Boy is 132 feet long, so long it features a hinge between the two sets of drive wheels to let the engine go around curves in the track. It operated for Union Pacific from 1941-1961, and it spent more than 50 years in a railroad museum in California before the company reacquired it and put it through a two-year restoration.

The first step before getting into the cab of this massive engine was to get outfitted with a safety vest, goggles, ear protection and gloves. Then came the warning to beware the heat.

After all, we were riding on the back of superheated boiler in air temperatures well over 90 degrees.

“Be sure to drink lots of water,” engineer Ed Dickens warned. “We have ice packs we can put in your shirt if you need to. We can’t stop for you if you have a problem, and we’ve had people have heat exhaustion before.”

The train started rolling promptly at 8 a.m., with plans to maneuver around the tracks at Union Station to pick up the cars in the train.

Big Boy pulls its tender, which is filled with water and fuel; then a diesel engine that helps with dynamic braking; a number of classic Union Pacific passenger and freight cars for the train crew, spare parts and water; and then a number of hopper cars for additional braking power.

We headed east at first through the company’s Neff Yard, but departure was delayed as the train stopped to allow two members of the crew to replace a leaking gasket on one of four water glass gauges in the cab.

“Those gaskets are under 300 pounds of pressure,” Dickens said. “They’re a consumable item, and from time to time they do start to leak, so rather than let it fail completely and blow steam all over the place, the moment it begins to leak a little bit we just change it. We’re prepared to do that kind of work. We’re prepared to do a lot of work that you have to do on a big steam locomotive.”

With repairs completed, the train headed out about 45 minutes behind schedule.

We headed onto the rails heading southwest through Martin City, a Kansas City suburb, then into Kansas and south toward Paola.

The sound, the heat, the vibrations and the sheer excitement of 6,500 horsepower pushing a 600-ton locomotive and hundreds of tons of train were overwhelming.

The engine’s firebox is directly in front of the crew as they stand in the cab, with oil-fired flames separated from them only by a couple of inches of steel.

As the train gathered steam, we topped out at 50 mph on the trip. Flames started to snake out of the tiny gaps in the firebox door, looking a little like a fire-breathing dragon.

The one thing that made the heat bearable was the wind whipping through the open cab, and copious amounts of water.

The sound was deafening, with the constant roar of the locomotive and steel wheels on steel tracks punctuated by the sound of the steam whistle every time the train approached a crossing.

And at each crossing were people — some watching from their cars, but many more outside with cameras on tripods, smartphones and tablets taking pictures and recording the sounds that were common in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century but have long since been replaced by the whine of the diesel locomotive.

Hundreds of people gathered at the rail yard in Paola to watch as the train made its first maintenance stop of the day.

Dickens got on his bullhorn to warn them to stay 25 feet back from the rails.

“This makes all the hard work we experience ... all worth it,” Dickens said. “People are enjoying the locomotive and having a good time.

“Yes, we want people to stay back 25 feet,” he said. “Oftentimes people get swept up in the moment and they think they want to get that perfect picture, so they do get a little bit close. But we’re cautious. We always come in slowly. We’ve got law enforcement out ahead of us to help manage the crowd. It’s all a function of making sure that everyone can see and experience the locomotive.”

Crowds of people young and old gather at the places where Big Boy stops as well as the crossings and bridges on the train’s route.

Bob Ryan, of Lenexa, was one of hundreds of people who got up early to see the train leave Union Station in Kansas City.

A common sight when riding in Big Boy, onlookers gather Wednesday at a crossing in Martin City, Mo., as Union Pacific engine No. 4014 passes by. The company publishes the train’s schedule online so groups will gather at crossings on the route to see the massive steam engine. GLOBE | JOHN HACKER

Ryan said steam locomotives look alive in ways that a diesel engine just can’t match.

“I love trains, and I’m involved with the model trains at Union Station, but this you don’t see every day,” Ryan said. “This is the real thing. With a steam train, it’s the mechanical action and the size and the hugeness of it all. It just overwhelms you. With the driving arms and the wheels and all of that, the mechanical action is right in front of you.”

In Paola, Jenny Dooley, of Overland Park, Kansas, brought her son, Gordon, 6, to see the engine for the second time in his lifetime.

Big Boy went on a similar tour in 2019 that took it through Coffeyville, Kansas, on the way to Kansas City, and traveled some of these same rails.

“When it came two years ago, we found it, and we watched it through Martin City and then went to Union Station and saw it, then watched it leave from Union Station off a bridge,” Dooley said. “He just loves trains. I want to instill in him a passion of something that’s not video games, something that’s real, something to be proud of. and these guys do an incredible job, hard work, a labor of love. You’re not going to see this anymore. This is like history passing through your fingers.”

Steve Holmes, of Joplin, drove to Parsons a few times this week to scout out locations to photograph the train as it arrived.

“If you want to feel like a kid again, even if you’re not a kid, go see a steam engine,” he said.

To keep track of Big Boy’s travels on its monthlong tour and to see more information about the history of the locomotive, go to https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/index.htm.

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