That is according to information posted to the Spike 150 Website Friday. Tickets for the May 12 ride go on sale at 10 a.m. Mountain Time on Monday. Only 82 spaces will be available for the doubleheader with 4-8-4 No. 844 through Weber and Echo canyons to the top of Wasatch grade. The trip will be the first ever Big Boy excursion. The last 4000-class UP locomotive ran in July 1959.
The pop up excursion benefits the Golden Spike Foundation that is coordinating Utah’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad and the UP Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The event is more than a train ride. It comes with a May 11 tour of the UP passenger train; interaction with Scott Moore, UP’s senior vice president of corporate relations and chief administrative officer and Ed Dickens, senior manager of the UP steam operations; and a photo op for participants who want to stand on the rear car’s back platform. The next day, riders get breakfast on board, a boxed lunch, and a chartered bus ride back to Ogden.
For details or to purchase, go to www.spike150.org
And ultimately this sold out! Congratulations to the museums, but alas for the rest of us.
Fairness requires me to note only four seats in coach remain on the morning of May 7. This seemingly validates the two museums pricing, but still leaves a truly sour aftertaste.
Hopefully the UP will at some point this year offer a public trip with enough seats (they have the cars to offer about 200 coach seats) to offer a chance for the larger public to ride.
But I hail Ed Dickens at the Union Pacific for a triumph of restoration and a great gift to us all, even those confined to the trackside. Truly thanks. The 4014 rolls back into the present!
Now two weeks have passed and coach seats remain fir sale. The wealthy spoke for the dome seats in 12 minutes, but the rest of us have our say as well.
Now after nine days seat space remains available in coach on the Big Boy trip. Another Newswire post suggests a midsummer Omaha trip part way across Iowa, also as a fundraiser for the Union Pacific Museum. So far no confirmation of the intended power. It will be interesting to see if the Museum is a little more generous “next time”. The clock is running on May 12.
As the sixth day of coach seat sales for the May 12 trip opens, seats not surprisingly remain available for $3000 each. The problem now for the Golden Spike Foundation/UP Historical Museum is they can’t cut rates without refunding to those who potentially paid the proffered opening price.
There will NOT be many other opportunities for folks to ride behind the 4014–at least not on offer now. Based on the decade plus since the UP and the Pacific Limited Group ended their joint marketing partnership for steam trips, there will be few to no opportunities to do more than chase or line-side any possible future runs of the Big Boy. And right now a possible market for literally thousands of riders/supporters exists.
The Cheyenne to Ogden trips for both the 844 and the 4014 included four actual days of running in each direction. If the public could theoretically ride (at whatever price) from Ogden to Evanston, why not over Sherman Hill or across the Red Desert? Even now some of the sting of this very short-sided decision to accommodate only the absurdly over-priced museum fund-raiser could be ameliorated by opening a coach or two (if not, Lord forbid, a premium dome or lounge car) to public riders on other segments of at least the 4014 moves.
Whatever the liability insurance worries were, they were obviously addressed on May 12. Over the potentially 8 operating days round-trip for the 4014 hundreds might ride. Ticket sales could be restricted so that no one could buy more than one day.
If these revenues were donated to the two museums, and if only 82 seats per day were sold for the 7 remaining/unbooked possible operating days (not covered by the announced trip on May 12), another 574 passengers might ride. In reality the train could take many times those numbers if every seat has not already been allocated to VIPs.
The train is coming from Cheyenne to Ogden (and returning) regardless of any ridership, so any sales could help with either cost-reduction or fund-raising. Because this is overall a public relations trip the Union Pacific is clearly not seeking profit here (and obviously never does on modern era steam trips).
Could we challenge the Union Pacific to consider this possibility and to welcome the vast majority of its supporters who could not afford to spend thousands, but would pay hundreds, for a sole chance to experience a Big Boy in motion? There is still time to contemplate this chance.
At those kinds of prices, I wonder if there are some people who are expecting the 4014 to be present at Promontory? (Actually, if the replica 119 were relettered “4014” that might REALLY confuse them!)
Many of the comparisons mentioned here are invalid. This is not a “Rail Excursion”. It’s the first time a Big Boy has been running since 1969. Not the second time, or the fifth. The first. It’s also part of the 150’th Golden Spike celebration. Not to be repeated….ever. The 151’rst anniversary doesn’t have quite the same cachet. Next big Golden Spike celebration will be the 200’th in 2069 (assuming all the railroads haven’t PSRed themselves out of business).
Supply and demand. 4014 will be out and about in the future, but it will never be an excursion train with departures at 08:00 MWF. Prices will always be higher. Come back next year when it’s on it’s ninth or tenth trip and it’s not part of the 150’th, and they won’t be asking $3-5K per ticket.
Supply and demand has nothing to do with this trip. It’s a fund raiser and the museum/foundation took their shot at maximum return with the maximum insult to small donors and supporters.
As to lower prices next time there are only very rarely any UP trips now that are open to the public. For the past few years there was the Denver to Cheyenne Frontier Days special, which was so much in demand the seats were allocated by lottery (albeit at imaginable fixed prices starting at $250) and a one time fund raiser for the UP Museum at $500. The Denver trips are no more, as the ghost of the sponsor, the Denver Post has dropped it as an annual event.
Going into the fourth day of sales seats remain in coach.
Coach seats remain available afrer 48 hours. The elite bookers swarmed, the rest not so much!
Well, I guess the market has spoken. It’s 24 hours after the tickets went on sale, and the relatively few coach seats still haven’t sold out. Too bad they weren’t priced so that regular folks could have taken part in this historic event.
Those folks that paid $5000 and $3000 are regular folks just like you only they saw that this was maybe a absolute once in a life time chance to ride the first time a Big Boy pulled a seat you could buy. I know one guy who has already signed off his life saving to a health care facility so he is trying to not leave any money left over tor them, so I’m sure he will be on board. Price was no object. Too bad they can’t pull the Winter Park ski train cars up to Cheyenne and use them behind the Big Boy for a couple C notes on a number of round trips up the hill. I guess the Big Boy pulled troop trains and maybe some passenger trains, but guess it was never used on a railfan excursion. If you live 10 more years, it would only cost you $300 a year for the memories or bragging rights.
It’s 12 minutes into ticket sale and the (possibly 24–the capacity in revenue service of a UP dome coach upstairs) dome seats are already sold-out at $5000 per person. This is a very rich country!
Ross and Cox – Take a good look at the announced Union Pacific schedule for the train (https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/schedule/index.htm). The full schedule is there and shows all moves from Cheyenne back to Cheyenne.
As stated by Union Pacific, “No. 4014 and No. 844 will double-head on their return trip to the Union Pacific Steam Shop in Cheyenne” and the May 12th event is the start of the return leg. The train operates Ogden (8am) to Evanston (1105am) only, thus the bus ride back.
Yep – its a high price and certainly not for everybody, but no event is. The train will probably be full as a number of customers, special guests, marketing folks, executives, etc., will also be on the train.
I myself does not Union Pacific. Why when you take one of there rail excursions you are bused back the other way. If I could afford it I think I would still feel funny about being bused back. If Union Pacific can manage to have a rail excursion that is round trip and ticket prices more down to earth in the future I will swallow my words. Union Pacific might have started a new trend with these prices, have fun.
Back in 2017, my wife and I took AMTRAK from Cumberland, MD to Los Angeles, then up the coast to Emeryville and back to Cumberland sleeper-class for about half the price of a Big Boy excursion coach ticket. Again, it’s all about the value individuals place on opportunities placed before them.
So to reduce my oh so long attempts to explain why I object to charging $3000-5000 for a truly once in alifetime trip, and in so doing block the overwhelming majority of would be riders for competing for one of the 82 seats, it reduces to this; merely because you could do a thing doesn’t mean you should.
It’s already been reported that the locomotives are NOT going to be “Doubleheaded”, 844 will run thru to Ogden first and then, about a week later, the 4014 will make the trip. And yes, those are damned high ticket prices even for a steam excursion. I also sent an e-mail to Ed Dickens asking if he knew where the 4014 would be going after the ceremonies at Ogden. So far, no answer back. Maybe even he doesn’t know yet, but I suspect it would be to southern California to let the people in the Griffith Park historical society see it in operation since it was” their” engine that was picked over all of the others.
Many people here are looking at the cost of running the trip versus the ticket price, and the potential train capacity. There is no relationship here – this is a major fund raising event, it is not a general excursion trip to allow everyone to ride (you could never have enough capacity for that purpose).
For major fund raising events, $3000 and $5000 tickets can actually be on the low end. Look at the simple meals, networking events, and other events for art museums, orchestras, universities, political candidates, etc. They run at this price or higher, and often have hundreds of people attend. The purpose of the event is to raise significant funds quickly, using a once-in-a-lifetime event. This certainly fits the bill.
I won’t be riding, I have work conflicts. But it certainly is an interesting event that will probably sell out in five minutes. Millions upon millions of people spend far more each year on Super Bowl, World Series, Final Four, fishing, poker tournaments, and thousands of other one-day events, so why not for this?
Concerned that not everyone can participate? In some cases, several sponsors buy blocks of tickets at full price and then make then available at much lower prices so the general public can attend. Anyone willing to do that?
Mr. Jennings – Agreed, and that’s why I wondered why 500 tickets were not offered for this fund-raiser, rather than 82. These two locos, double-headed, could pull more cars at track speed than UP has equipment.
This may be a fund raiser but it is still far to expensive for the likes of me. All I am is a housewife in a small town in the middle of a forest. Nobody I know has that kind of disposable income.
Mister Dupree:
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Let’s see: Do I want to pay $3,000 for 3 hours in coach, or would I rather take the Orient Express from Venice to London for about the same price? Decisions, decisions…
I concur that Union Pacific has the right to charge what they want. But that begs the question of whether they should concur in a charge like this. And again I suspect it is the charitable organizations that have taken this shot.
If they actually sell 82 seats they will feel vindicated. But others who might have supported their work may well wonder why they should contribute to supposed charities whose “leaders” have shown they can afford so much that the small contributors are clearly irrelevant.
Having spent most of my posts here complaining and regretting the public price on this trip, let me pay tribute due to the Union Pacific as well.
The UP steam program remains an exceptional thing far too little appreciated by the broad public. Only UP never retired at least one standard gauge steam engine, the magnificent passenger stallion 4-8-4 #844, although the Rio Grande also retained the Colorado barrow gauge steam fleet well into the 1960s. I was blessed to typically get one to two rides every year behind the then #8444 starting in 1965 when I entered college at the University of Denver.
In those days both the Intermountain Chapter of the NRHS and the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club sponsored frequent UP trips. Most commonly in the mid 1960s we went on a very full and long same-day round trip from Denver to Rawlings, Wy. Later these rides were shortened to turn back at Laramie, but always there were matchless runbys on Sherman Hill. On occasion we ventured east from Cheyenne towards Yoder, WY and once from Denver to Julesburg on the now partially abandoned route of the City of Denver.
These were fast trips too. I clocked the great Northern once coming down the Cheyenne to Denver line at over 100mph and we were braking at the time! Later, UP in the modern era of liability crisis, capped the 844 below 70mph, but she could move a 12 car passenger train at track speed with ease.
It seemed a miracle when the 4-6-6-4 Challenger #3985 returned to service. By then I had graduated from college and was employed by the Colorado Dept of Employment. I had to visit our Greeley office one day that turned out to be the same afternoon the Cheyenne steam crew took the Challenger out for a shakedown run. I called in sick that afternoon for a glorious and solo chase, but alas had no camera with me. No problem there now in cell phone times!
Never was a UP excursion train shabby or Ill-maintained. Even after Amtrak came in the coaches were perfectly maintained. The leg rests worked. Seat upholstery looked new, and in the lounge car always attached to our trips, the Union Pacific still printed proper drink menus with full IP graphics and style. A typical little touch that showed corporate pride!
In those days a typical RMRR Club trip would sport the four retained leg-rest coaches, the one retained dome coach, a flat top lounge car and either a coffee shop lounge car for a simple sandwich meal service or earlier a unique quasi cafeteria car that had been created for the UP Las Vegas Holiday Special train.
In the 1960s and 70s the one retained dome diner never appeared in excursion service, but later as UP expanded its fleet by buying back its own cars that had been sold off to other carriers and excursion trains, the consist grew.
By then I was well into my 34 year career running Rail Travel Center, an operator of tours by train worldwide. We ran multiple programs in cooperation/partnership with the UP sales agent the Pacific Limited Group and jointly with our friendly competitor Mountain Outins Tours. Some trips offered amazing journeys, like the last passenger train over Tennessee Pass on the former Rio Grande.
On the wonderful late 1990s trip from Denver to Spokane and Portland, we had the perfectly preserved City of Portland dome diner, a somewhat overly restored original UP dome lounge (with a dark wood interior that would never have been seen on a 1950s streamliner), a flat top diner, the four leg rest coaches, plus the dome coach and flat top lounge from the pre-Amtrak excursions and even some repatriated dome coaches that an excursion operator had repurposed as dome table cars. A couple of 11 double bedroom sleepers also appeared if my fading recollection is right.
And Union Pacific even used the #844 to power the Amtrak San Francisco Zephyr, when Amtrak was still on the Overland Route prior to 1981 for the Chicago to San Francisco service. The coaches for Denver to Laramie trips would be deadheaded behind a diesel from their storage area in Council Bluffs to Denver, but the #844 several times came down from Cheyenne the day before a trip and returned the day after on the point of Amtrak!
And now a Big Boy returns. It seems unbelievable. I remember Steve Lee telling one of our groups that it would never happen because of clearance issues, not to mention costs. But there is no never to a railroad as proud as the Union Pacific!
The great mass of its fans will not ride behind this titan, but they didn’t originally either. The Challengers routinely did passenger work. Big Boys, fast for freight, were too slow for the UP passenger fleet and rarely hauled the yellow streamlines. So perhaps we are best content to watch and marvel next month, although what I know so many others wouldn’t give for one affordable ride behind the ultimate God of steam engines!
So complaints indeed fade beside the incredible steam (and preserved passenger) program of the Union Pacific. I have often thought what a shame it is that no carrier set aside a complete post World War II streamlined train-set, but of course UP has done exactly that.
They could dispatch a City of Los Angeles or the City of Portland tomorrow, complete with all the feature cars including the original dome diner, dome lounge cars, dome coach and leg rest chair cars and the ever elegant Pullman sleeping cars built for those trains. Most of these cars even still contain their original interior decor.
Hail to the Union Pacific and thanks for a lifetime of joyful memories. I’m fortunate to be old enough (71) to have ridden the great UP regular trains as well. I had lunch in the dome diner on the City of LA with Jack Benny (who paid the tab for three people he had never met until that morning-a story for another day). I rode the Fast Mail by day thru the rugged desert canyons from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. I took the Portland Rose almost every weekend in the late 1969s from Denver to Greeley.
Perhaps my most poignant UP memories are from 1970 and the beginning of 1971. Then I rode the City of Everywhere, the monster combined all destinations UP living ghost of all the streamliners. It remained a great train even when operating as the combined City of Portland, Denver, Los Angeles , San Francisco and Kansas City.
The UP went out in style and remains unmatched for its love and celebration of its history and heritage almost fifty years after Amtrak day in the spring of 1971. Eternally we all, who say we love trains, must honor Uncle Pete with our abiding love and gratitude.
The obvious conclusion if there really will be 500 total passengers onboard this trip is that the others are shippers and/or other invited guests, including quite possibly select UP employees. There really are four days of short rides as the trains fairly slowly crosses Wyoming, so the company has multiple chances to showcase the train.
Particularly with respect to treating employees that is something I would hope and trust the Union Pacific to do. A great employer says thanks to its own folks and its public alike. It’s the latter that are not well served at $3000-5000 per person.
I suspect the reason for the 82 seats open to the theoretical public is that that is about the capacity of one 44 seat chair car plus one 36 seat dome coach. The really elegant dome lounge and dome diner and seats in sleepers are quite possibly not on the public menu.
This is just a guess, but based on our past tours that my company, Rail Travel Center, offered with the joint support of the Pacific Limited Group and Mountain Outins’ Tours, on much longer Union Pacific steam train journeys, it seems a fair one. I stand by my deep regret about the pricing of the public seats, but the matter of restrictions on possible access to the truly premium cars may explain the Heritage Fleet car tour included prior to departure from Ogden in the still very high priced coach and dome ticket package.
On those long ago trips the UP typically sold coach and coach dome separately from access to true UP dome lounge, and dome diner cars, which were offered as a First Class option. We put our groups in that best car access class and as I noted below, never remotely approached these prices even after including hotels for multiple nights, off-train sightseeing, transfers, most meals and extras like evening talks and shop tours.
But if I was willing to pay $5000 for access to a dome seat for three hours I think I’d be a bit put out if restricted just to a chair car dome. But if you are willing indeed to “contribute” either $3000 or $5000 to the joint Union Pacific Museum/Golden Spike Foundation you certainly need to be comfortable with what you’ll get.
All speculation. We’ll certainly eventually get reports from those who could and would pay. I continue to regret that this truly once in a lifetime trip was priced so far beyond anything the majority of rail fans and general travelers alike could possibly afford. Truly a missed opportunity.
Carl Fowler – Your remarks are well-conceived, but as I read through these posts there is a missing piece – This train will not carry 82 passengers – maybe closer to 500 or more, I would think. It will not consist of two or so cars; maybe fifteen or more? So where are the other passengers coming from and what is the basis of their carriage and are they paying anything for their tickets and if not why not? Methinks there is a good reason for this arrangement.