News & Reviews News Wire Big Boy, No. 844 reenact Golden Spike’s nose-to-nose moment in Ogden ceremony NEWSWIRE

Big Boy, No. 844 reenact Golden Spike’s nose-to-nose moment in Ogden ceremony NEWSWIRE

By Jim Wrinn | May 9, 2019

| Last updated on November 3, 2020


Anniversary celebration moves to Promontory Summit on Friday

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Ogden_Ceremony_Wrinn
Big Boy No. 4014 and 4-8-4 No. 844 form the backdrop as a giant Golden Spike is hammered in place at an Ogden, Utah, ceremony by officials and descendants of participants in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.
TRAINS: Jim Wrinn
OGDEN, Utah — With a call on the radio from Union Pacific Chairman Lance Fritz as part of a Thursday morning ceremony, Big Boy No. 4014 eased into a scene that was a twist on an iconic American image of two locomotives facing nose to nose on a fine spring day in Utah.

With UP’s Ed Dickens at the throttle, No. 4014 moved to a spot on a stage with 4-8-4 No. 844 in front of a banner that read “#done”. The two locomotives posed like the Jupiter and No. 119 at Promontory 150 years ago for a ceremony honoring the Golden Spike.

Frtiz, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, U.S. Rep. Bob Bishop, and descendants of UP construction boss Grenville Dodge and Chinese laborers used hammers to tap an oversized golden spike, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869.

The locomotives arrived Wednesday and will remain on display through Saturday. On Sunday, they begin their eastward trek home to Cheyenne. On Friday, the celebration moves to Promontory Summit for a ceremony and recreation of the 1869 completion ceremony.

7 thoughts on “Big Boy, No. 844 reenact Golden Spike’s nose-to-nose moment in Ogden ceremony NEWSWIRE

  1. we were sitting on stadium bleachers but could hear everything and watch it on Jumbotron, next best thing to be in the front row.

  2. I was watching both Trains live feed and Union Pacific’s live feed. Fortunately, UPs live feed was from a better vantage point and never had bandwidth problems.

  3. I was there! It was awesome finally seeing a Big Boy in action.. Will go today again to get some more photos before it leaves Ogden.

  4. Not so sure the “live” video was worth the sacrifice in resolution. They should have had the camera ( or a second camera) recording it and then upload that recording later when more bandwidth was available.

  5. W Cook,

    It has nothing to do with any of the things you mentioned…the fuzzy video was all due to bandwidth limitations, to many people using the internet at the same time degrades video…which Steve kept telling people throughout the live streams, but I guess no one was listening to what he was saying.

  6. I don’t know if it was Facebook, the numbers of bars, or the new camera Steve of Trains used for this event as it was fuzzy much of the time. Or the connection dropped just like when the train was arriving at Carter, WY. They should turn the camera back in for one without automatic focus, I would guess. Even the later video of the event has much of it with a fuzzy image. I guess they used older generation cameras to get the video for their 2 hour Video. Very frustrating to see that there was no monitoring of what that camera was doing all the time. Also you don’t do an interview to your viewers with the moving train making noise directly behind, keep the line active for another minute for the train to pass and then tell up that you would be back on the Magazine the next day.

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