The world’s largest steam locomotive is making rare stops in Northern California. Here’s where

Elise Fisher
·3 min read
7

As part of its “Westward Bound” tour, the world’s largest steam locomotive is coming to Roseville next week — one of only two major display stops the train is making while traveling through five western states.

Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 has left its home in Wyoming and is making its way through Utah, Idaho and Nevada, where it will periodically make whistle stops for viewing.

Once it reaches California, the massive locomotive will make a display stop Friday and Saturday, July 12-13, in the historic Placer County town, along the tracks at Atlantic and Jefferson streets, where it will also pick up passengers for a sold out trip to Sparks, Nevada.

Visiting Big Boy in Roseville from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. is free to the public both days, and there will be plenty to do for visitors, including a trip to the Carnegie Museum, located behind the tracks on Lincoln Street, which is opening an exhibit about the history of Big Boy and offering a railroad-themed activity for kids.

Locomotive fans will also have an opportunity to visit the “Experience the Union Pacific” rail car, a converted luggage car that has interactive museum displays. On one side of the car, visitors can see the evolution of locomotives, starting with UP No. 119, and on the other, learn about railroad operations.

Vintage photographs, interactive technology and sound make the car a true multi-media history lesson on the Union Pacific.

Big Boy No. 4014 will also carry a converted luggage car along its journey that hosts an interactive Pacific Union museum.
Big Boy No. 4014 will also carry a converted luggage car along its journey that hosts an interactive Pacific Union museum.

To celebrate, the city of Roseville is also hosting live performances, from Sac-City Little Big Band and the old-west Black Flag Gang, food trucks and a vendor market 9 a.m to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Big Boy’s rare passenger excursion leaving from Roseville on Saturday is this year’s annual gala fundraiser for the Union Pacific Museum in Iowa.

Ticket-holders for the sold-out, one-way trip will travel along the original route of the transcontinental railroad in dome passenger cars — through Donner Summit — which is known for its solid granite tunnels built by Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s.

For prices ranging from $800 to $2,000, passengers are getting the full historic experience of travel by train, Union Pacific said, with assigned seats that may place them with other parties. Still, the car is luxurious, complete with air conditioning and restrooms.

Twenty-five Big Boy locomotives, which weigh 1.2 million pounds and are 130 feet long, were completed for Union Pacific in 1941. No. 4014 then drove 1,031,205 miles and was in service for 20 years when it retired.

Union Pacific later brought the train out of retirement from the RailGiants Museum in Pomona to Wyoming in 2013 to restore it, before it returned to service in 2019 to celebrate 150 years of the transcontinental railroad.

If you can’t make it to Roseville, you can catch the locomotive on a 30-minute whistle stop in other parts of California: Oroville on Thursday and Colfax and Truckee on Sunday. You can also track where the Big Boy is on its journey through the Union Pacific steam schedule.