3985

UP 3985 in Kansas returning from Houston, where it entertained guests at the 2004 Super Bowl. (Sorry; I can’t run all the pik, because it was over a magazine-fold. —It also looks like a Howard Fogg watercolor.) (Photo by Roy Inman.)

Behold, Union Pacific 3985, the largest restored railroad steam-locomotive in the world.
Without the caption, I’d think the picture was a Howard Fogg watercolor. —The grass in the snow, and the sky, look like Fogg. So do the crossbucks.
3985 was built in 1943 by American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, N.Y., part of an order of 105 4-6-6-4 Challenger locomotives for Union Pacific Railroad.
The 4-6-6-4 wheel arrangement is known as the “Challenger,” and the engine is articulated, meaning the frame of the front wheel-sets (including the drivers) is hinged to the rear frame.
The locomotive boiler is solidly mounted to the rear frame, and the front frame can offset to allow the locomotive’s massive length to negotiate tight curves (e.g. crossovers) without derailing.
Evidence of this offset is discernible in the second picture.
3985 and its brothers are the massive 4-8-8-4 “Big Boy” downsized. The “Big Boy” was the largest steam-locomotive ever built, and with the coming of the Challengers was transferred to the Wasatch mountains in Utah.
The new Challengers were assigned to Wyoming — idea being to speed up freight dispatch across the state. (The Challengers could boom-and-zoom.)

UP 3985 in Little Rock, Ark. in 2004. (Photo by David Hoge.)

3985 was retired about 1960, and put on display in Cheyenne.
But then UP needed more space, and wanted to move 3985.
A bunch of Union Pacific shop retirees wanted to restore 3985, so UP management let them, expecting failure.
But the retirees got it running in 1981. Now what!
3985 joined the other Union Pacific steam locomotive, 844, a 4-8-4 Northern, also built by American Locomotive Company, Union Pacific’s last steam-engine, never retired.
I’ve never seen 844, but I’ve seen 3985 twice: first time depicted below, and second a ride behind.
The first time was in the early ‘80s — we flew out to Denver and picked up a rental V6 Firebird.
We had no idea where we were going at all, so drove up Interstate 25 into Cheyenne.
It was the old “look for the smoke” drill. I saw a pillar of thin smoke, and arrowed west out the old Route 30.
There it was, off to the left in a railroad-yard.
3985 was being fired up to take over an excursion from Denver.
Diesels would bring the excursion up from Denver, and then 3985 would take over and run the train out to Laramie, then back to Cheyenne.
Within minutes 3985 was accelerating west out of the yard, so we got back on Route 30, which parallels the original UP main up Sherman Hill.
But 3985 was arrowing south on another line, away from us, on what we later found was the Harriman Cutoff, a line built in 1953 to make the westbound ascent of Sherman easier. (Sherman is the Continental divide.)
The line from Denver switched into both the Harriman and the UP main; so 3985 was moving to accommodate, and would back to the stopped excursion.
I bombed out a side-road, completely lost, and stopped a couple guys in a Pontiac Celebrity-clone.
“You guys look like railfans. Any idea where you’re going?”
“No,” they answered. “We’re from Georgia.”
I ended up driving under the Harriman, and 3985 was off in the distance, waiting for the train from Denver.

3985 and Denver excursion, westbound on Harriman. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Spotmatic.)

It was going up the Harriman, so I photographed it as it passed (see pik above).
From there we got on a long rain-slicked dirt road that eventually ended up in Harriman, a small collection of cottages put up by the railroad. (The Firebird on that road was great — it had incredibly good balance; I could drift the tail.) There also had been a water-tower, and it was still there.
3985 and train passed and we went farther out along the UP main west of the summit-tunnel. (The Harriman merged back into the UP main before the summit.)
We had a long wait, because apparently they were doing a run-by. Linda and I waited on a large rock overlooking vast desolation.
Wyoming is like that. Set off an atomic bomb, and it would look like a firecracker.
The surrounding area seemed arid. Harriman at least had stubby green pine trees.
The train continued into Laramie, where it would get turned on a wye.
Laramie has a gigantic foot-bridge across all the tracks of the yard.
We set up on that footbridge, and what I remember most was the banter that began:
“Where ya from?”
“Pocatello, Idaho”
“San Francisco.”
“Atlanta, Georgia.”
“Rochester, New York.”
I cried. Yo; people from all over the country were on that foot-bridge to see that engine.

3985 in Laramie. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Spotmatic.)

3985 was wyed, but not the train. (The wye was apparently a branch.)
Finally after a couple hours they had everything coupled, so they began reloading the train.
The train moved farther out so they could load the rear cars — I was able to run along-side on a parallel side-street so I could take more pictures. I could do that, as I had been running footraces.
Finally the train left.
My final image was of 3985 where it crossed Interstate-80 in the gathering dusk west of Cheyenne. That image is still in my head.
We rode a small excursion behind 3985 a few years later; an excursion that rained the whole time and cost a fortune.
They only had five cars; no work at all for 3985.
It was frigid. 89 bazilyun run-bys. I remember standing in a small trackside shed and freezing. We were waiting for a run-by; and it was preferable to standing outside in the wind-driven sleet.
3985 is still running. Although it’s been converted to burn fuel-oil; same as 844. The two times I saw it it was still burning coal.
My blowhard macho brother-from-Boston chased it in Illinois once in his Cherokee, and could barely keep up with it.
3985 was doing 60 mph crossing the square highway grid at an angle. I guess he eventually lost it.
3985 can still boom-and-zoom, and they run it that way.

“Howard Fogg” is a famous railroad artist, now deceased, who often painted watercolor.

“Crossbucks” are the roadway grade-crossing sign — the “railroad-crossing” sign is on crossbucks.

“Crossovers” are switches from one track to a parallel track; like from one track to the other in a two-track railroad.

“Sherman Hill” is fairly easy, but long. The summit, where there’s a tunnel, is the Continental Divide. It’s the highest point on the original Union Pacific Transcontinental Railroad — although the original line has been abandoned. The original crossing did not have a tunnel.

RE: “‘Old guy’ with the SpotMatic.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). The “Spotmatic” is my old Pentax Spotmatic 35mm film camera I used about 40 years, since replaced by a Nikon D100 digital camera.

RE: “Water-tower.......” —Railroad steam-locomotives boil and consume great quantities of water. Therefore water-towers were along the railroad to fill the engine tenders. Many were not removed when railroads switched from steam-power to diesel — as were many coaling towers.

“Linda” is my wife of 40+ years.

RE: “Run-by.....” Everyone gets off the train, the train backs up, and then runs by the detrained passengers making great smoke and noise so the passengers can take pictures and videos.

A “wye” is essentially an inside curved-sided triangle. The train goes in one leg of the wye, backs out the other, and is thereby reversed.

“My blowhard macho brother-from-Boston” is my younger brother “Jack,” who noisily badmouths everything I do or say.