By RORY MOORE
Special to the Hays Post
Big Boy No. 4104, the largest operating steam locomotive in the world, passed through Hays in front of a crowd of hundreds on Sunday morning.
The famous 83-year-old steam engine stopped in town before leaving for Grainfield as part of its Heartland of America Tour through nine states.
Big Boy announced its arrival when it tooted its whistle to many excited families who gathered to watch the train as it stopped on the tracks along the intersection of Ninth and Milner streets.
Many had seen it before, while others saw it for the first time.
Rick Stapleton of Dodge City had seen other iterations of Big Boy in museums but had yet to see it in motion.
“It’s a tremendous locomotive, and I’ve always wanted to see one move and feel the noise,” he said. “I’ve seen one at a museum in Denver and one on the bluffs above the Missouri River at Omaha.”
The train is one of 25 Big Boy locomotives manufactured by the American Locomotive Company and Union Pacific to transport freight across the country, primarily through the Wasatch Mountain Range in Utah and the Rocky Mountain Range in Colorado.
Introduced to the railroad industry in the 1940s, the powerful train became reliable because of its power. It is part of Union Pacific’s Heritage Fleet, which has been running a restoration project on it since 2013.B
Built in 1941, the No. 4104 locomotive weighs 1.2 million pounds and is 132 feet long. The Heritage Fleet retired it in 1961, and Union Pacific returned it to service in 2019.
Big Boy is one of the few remaining operative steam engines in the world, making the experience unique for many of its younger spectators who are used to modern trains that run on fuel and electricity.
“It’s really impressive with them blowing the whistle and how loud it got,” Dale Highfill of Hays said. “It kind of surprised everybody.”
People of all ages have admired the train due to its previous visits to Hays, particularly in 2019 when its appearance was illuminated by snowfall. Its popularity and yearly trips prompt many to travel out of town to observe the locomotive in person.
“I’ve talked to people that spent as much as two and a half hours to get here to see it,” Highfill said. “That’s quite a length of time just to come here to watch this, and after they do, they won’t forget it.”
For older spectators like Highfill, Big Boy’s stop in Hays brings back memories from growing up with older technology and watching it evolve.
“This kind of gives away your age,” he said. “When my great-great-grandfather and me watched these doing work down in Oklahoma, not this one but something similar.
"He would go about how he walked, and then he was on horseback and then he was in that land rush. We got airplanes and automobiles, and he was wondering what was going to happen in our lifetime. I'm sitting here thinking we're back to the train."
Another factor driving people’s anticipation of the tour is their amazement at Big Boy’s size and appearance.
"Everybody seems a little bit surprised because I think the size gets them," Highfill said. "If you look at their faces, they've all got a grin, and they're happy. It's a big black train, so it stands out as pretty impressive to them."
