The Cheyenne Depot Museum says it will offer tours of the place where the Big Boy and Living Legend 4-8-4 No. 844 are rebuilt and maintained at 12:30 p.m. on three coming Fridays, Aug. 30, Sept. 6, and Sept. 13. A trolley bus will move visitors from the depot to the steam shop, where workers will be preparing No. 4014 for its Oct. 12-13 excursion in southern California.
The shop is in the former back shop building and next door is a portion of the roundhouse where other locomotives in the UP collection, including Challenger No. 3985, are kept.
Shop tour tickets are $20 per person and available by calling 307-778-3133.
Meanwhile in a hint that an extensive fall tour for the Big Boy may be in the works, a town in east central Colorado says No. 4014 will visit it in November. The Limon Heritage Museum & Railroad Park issued a “save the date” notice on its Facebook page, but the only date mentioned was the month of November. The town is on the UP’s former Kansas Pacific route from Kansas City to Denver.
So far, UP has only announced an excursion from West Colton, Calif., to Barstow on Oct. 12 eastbound and westbound on Oct. 13 to benefit the RailGiants Museum that provided No. 4014 to UP. Tickets for that excursion go on sale Saturday at https://4014traintix.com/index.html
A UP spokeswoman says the complete 4014 fall schedule will be released in early September.
The engine looks very nice sitting at home in the shop, When we saw her in 2017, there was still a lot of work to be done but Ed and the team pulled it together. Susan, Lee and me got to visit that time because of Susan’s connection to the steam crew. It was awesome to see the place I have heard so much about.
Garrison, see the story above… Limon
What is the town in “east central Colorado?”
Oh, thank you for clarifying Jim! I thought it was two separate towns, my bad.