Business owners and local economic development officials say hotels have been booked solid and restaurants have been packed wherever the big 4-8-8-4 makes an overnight stop.
“We’ve seen people from all over the country and restaurants are packed” says Chad Banks, manager of the Urban Renewal Agency in Rock Springs, where Big Boy and 4-8-4 No. 844 stayed for part of the week. “This has given us a great opportunity to show off our town.”
Banks says all the local hotels have filled their rooms, something that normally only happens in Rock Springs in the summer during the annual National High School Finals Rodeo competition.
In order to prepare for Big Boy’s visits, including a two-day stay in Rock Springs this week, the city put out extra trash cans and portable toilets in the downtown area near where the locomotive is on display.
Further west, Micki Cox of City of Evanston Facilities Department, tells the local newspaper that the town of 11,000 people grew by nearly 4,000 during Big Boy’s overnight stop there on Sunday. Downtown restaurants were also packed full on Sunday feeding hungry train chasers that followed the special from Ogden that morning. The manager of Suds Brothers Brewery tells the newspaper that it served more than 400 people Sunday afternoon.
Big Boy No. 4014 and 4-8-4 No. 844 will continue east to Rawlins on Thursday and Laramie on Friday. The train will stay in Laramie on Saturday before continuing to Cheyenne on Sunday, wrapping up a two-week long tour to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad.
Not only were there people from “all over the country”, there were people from all over the world following the Big Boy. In Ogden, I met people from Switzerland, Germany and China.
I wonder what the increase was at local emergency rooms from sprained ankles and such?
I’d be interested to know the comments of local law enforcement officials along the route. It would certainly be a credit to “Trains Nation” for the event to have happened without serious traffic and security issues.
Businesses along the way to and from the celebration in Ogden Ut. must have made a ton of money what with all the people following the “Big Boy” and 844. No wonder the hotels and restaurants had to bring in extra food & drinks and porta pottys. An event like this only occurs once in a great while. Wish I could have been there.
To Jim Wrinn, I believe you said you were allowed to ride in the cab of the “Big Boy” for a few miles between water stops, if so, did Ed Dickens allow you to run the engine for awhile?