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| − | {{Infobox character|name=Big Boy (he/it)|designer=SGuySMW (wiki) / S-Guy#9186 (Discord)|colour=Black and grey|series=4000 series 4-8-8-4 articulated steam locomotives|franchise=Union Pacific Railroad|image=Big Boy.jpg|creator=American Locomotive Company|voice=Hancock Long-Bell 3-Chime Whistle}} | + | {{ReLogo|Union_pacific_railroad_logo.svg|140px|-180|-140}} |
| − | '''Big Boy''' is a contestant in The Wiki Camp 2 who uses he/it pronouns. He is one of a type of simple articulated 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive manufactured by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) between 1941 and 1944 and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad in revenue service until 1962.
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| − | Big Boy and his 24 brothers, also called "Big Boy", were built to haul freight over the Wasatch Range between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyoming. In the late 1940s, they were reassigned to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they hauled freight over Sherman Hill to Laramie, Wyoming. They were the only locomotives to use a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement: four-wheel leading truck for stability entering curves, two sets of eight driving wheels and a four-wheel trailing truck to support the large firebox. | + | <center>[[File:To the Gateway - Super Mario Galaxy Music.mp3]]</center> |
| | + | <big><big><big><big><center>''...It was all a [[Big Boy/Before Elimination|dream]]...?''</center></big></big></big></big> |
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| − | Today, the Big Boy competing in TWC2, No. 4014, is one of eight that survive. He was re-acquired by Union Pacific, and between 2014 to 2019 it was rebuilt to operating condition for the 150th anniversary of the First transcontinental railroad. He thus regained the title as the largest and most powerful operating steam locomotive in the world. His seven surviving brothers are on static display in museums across the country.
| + | {{DiaEmpty|Big Boy's driver enters the Steam Shops.}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|What the hell happened?!}} |
| − | ==History==
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|I dunno, man.}} |
| − | ===Design===
| + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|No, it's hard to explain. Me and Big Boy were in... some kind of... [[wiki]]. With all these sentient objects and... [[seals]]?!}} |
| − | In 1936, Union Pacific introduced the Challenger-type (4-6-6-4) locomotives on its main line over the Wasatch Range between Green River and Ogden. For most of the route, the maximum grade is 0.82% in either direction, but the climb eastwards from Ogden, into the Wasatch Range, reached 1.14%. Hauling a 3,600-short-ton (3,300 t; 3,200-long-ton) freight train demanded double heading and helper operations, which slowed service. So Union Pacific decided to design a new locomotive that could handle the run by itself: faster and more powerful than the compound 2-8-8-0s that UP tried after World War I, able to pull long trains at a sustained speed of 60 miles per hour (100 km/h) once past mountain grades.
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|A wiki... with seals?}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|Yeah. Lots of them. Especially [[Nerpa|the ones]] from... was it [[Lake Baikal]]?}} |
| − | A Union Pacific design team led by Otto Jabelmann, the head of the Research and Mechanical Standards section of the Union Pacific's Mechanical Department, worked with ALCO (the American Locomotive Company) to re-examine their Challenger locomotives. The team found that the railroad's goals could be achieved by enlarging the Challenger firebox to about 235 by 96 inches (5.97 m × 2.44 m) (about 150 sq ft or 14 m2), increasing boiler pressure to 300 psi, adding four driving wheels, and reducing the size of the driving wheels from 69 to 68 in (1,753 to 1,727 mm). The new locomotive was carefully designed not to exceed an axle loading of 67,800 lb (30,800 kg), and achieved the maximum possible starting tractive effort with a factor of adhesion of 4.0. It was designed to travel smoothly and safely at 80 miles per hour. | + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|I only remember hearing about the [[California sea lion|sea lions]] of [[San Francisco]]...}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|Weird...}} |
| − | To achieve these new engineering goals, the Challenger locomotive was "comprehensively redesigned from first principles," wrote locomotive historian Tom Morrison. The overall design simplified some aspects of previous locomotive designs and added complexity elsewhere. Compounding, booster, and feed water heaters were eliminated, as were Baker valve gear and limited cut-off. But the "proliferation of valves and gauges on the backhead showed that running a Big Boy was an altogether more complicated and demanding task for the crew than running previous existing locomotives," Morrison wrote.
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|What else do you remember?}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|There was some... [[Super Mario|Mario]], except he wasn't [[Mario]].}} |
| − | The 4-8-8-4 class series, originally rumoured to be called the "Wasatch", after the Wasatch Mountains, acquired its nickname after an unknown ALCO worker scrawled "Big Boy" in chalk on the front of No. 4000, then under construction as the first of its class. The name stuck, and is now revered around the world, even in the TWC2 universe.
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|Then who was it?}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|He looked exactly like Mario, but he flew a [[Starship Mario|starship]].}} |
| − | Big Boy is articulated, like the Mallet locomotive design, though lacking the compounding of the Mallet. He and his brothers were built with a wide margin of reliability and safety, and normally operated well below 60 miles per hour (100 km/h) in freight service. Peak drawbar horsepower was reached at about 41 mph (66 km/h). The maximum drawbar pull measured during 1943 tests was 138,200 lbf (615,000 N) while starting a train.
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|Hahaha, that's just [[Super Mario Galaxy]]!}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|Nonono, that's not who you were thinking!}} |
| − | Big Boy has the longest engine body of any reciprocating steam locomotive, longer than two buses. He is also the heaviest reciprocating steam locomotive ever built (along with his class), the combined weight of the 772,250 lb (350,290 kg) engine and 436,500 lb (198,000 kg) tender outweighed a Boeing 747. There was some speculation that the first series of Chesapeake and Ohio 2-6-6-6 “Allegheny” locomotives, built by the Lima Locomotive Works in 1941, may have weighed as much as 778,200 lb (353,000 kg), exceeding Big Boy and his class, but subsequent re-weighs of early-production H8s, under close scrutiny by the builder and the railroad, found them to be less than 772,250 lb (350,290 kg).
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|Well, if it wasn't Mario, then it's gotta be someone else, right?}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|You don't understand!}} |
| − | ===Construction===
| + | {{DiaNone|Anonymous Employee|Eh, I'll figure it out. I have some work to do.}} |
| − | The American Locomotive Company manufactured 25 Big Boy locomotives for Union Pacific: 20 in 1941 and five in 1944. Along with the Challengers, Big Boy and his class arrived on the scene just as traffic was surging in preparation for American participation in World War II.
| + | {{Dia|BigBoyDriver|Alright, then...}} |
| − | | + | {{Dia|Narrator|''Will the driver's life ever be the same now that he experienced this fever dream? Will he ever notice that somewhere in another room there is a cup of [[Team 17]]'s hot chocolate? Stick around, fellow viewers, because shit is about to get real...!''}} |
| − | ===Operation===
| + | {{Team 17}} |
| − | Before converting to oil, Big Boy had large grates to burn the low-quality bituminous coal supplied by Union Pacific-owned mines in Wyoming. Coal was carried from his tender to the firebox by a stoker motor, a steam engine driving an auger.
| + | ==References== |
| − | | + | {{Reflist}} |
| − | Speaking of oil, as an experiment, Big Boy's brother, No. 4005, was converted to burn oil in 1946. Unlike a similar effort with the Challengers, the conversion failed due to uneven heating in his large, single-burner firebox. No. 4005 was converted back to coal firing in 1948. Another short-term experiment was the fitting of smoke deflectors on another brother, No. 4019, similar to those found on the railroad's FEF Series, as well as some of their Challengers. These were later removed, as the class's nozzle and blower in the smoke box could blow smoke high enough to keep engineers’ lines of sight clear.
| + | [[Category: Big Boy's Squad]][[Category:Trains]][[Category:Team 17]][[Category:He/Its]][[Category:Society of Steam]][[Category:Unionized]][[Category:Pages that are safe from the hogs]][[Category:Challenge 6: Unwanted Pages completionists]]<noinclude>[[Category:Competitors (official)]][[Category:Eliminated (official)]][[Category:Voted out (official)]][[Category:Train Note]]</noinclude> |
| − | | + | <noinclude>[[Category:Autoeliminated (official)]]</noinclude> |
| − | Big Boy and his class were held in high regard by crews, who found them sure-footed and more “user friendly” than other motive power. He was a capable machine; his rated hauling tonnage was increased several times over the years. But postwar increases in the price of coal and labour, along with the advent of efficient, cost-effective diesel-electric power, spelled the end of his class's operational lives. Nonetheless, they were among the last steam locomotives withdrawn from service on the Union Pacific. The last revenue train hauled by one of Big Boy's class ended its run early in the morning on July 21, 1959. Most were stored operational until 1961 and four remained in operational condition at Green River, Wyoming until 1962. Their duties were assumed by diesel locomotives and gas turbine-electric locomotives.
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| − | In 2019, Union Pacific completed the restoration of No. 4014 and placed it in excursion service. He was sent on a tour in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. In 2022, he somehow made his way to The Wiki Camp 2.
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| − | ==Accidents and incidents==
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| − | * On April 27, 1953, brother No. 4005 was pulling a freight train through southern Wyoming when he jumped a switch track at 50 mph (80 km/h), throwing the engine onto its left side and derailing its tender and the first 18 freight cars of his 62-car train. The engineer and fireman were killed on impact; the brakeman died of severe burns in a hospital a few days later. His tender destroyed his cab, and the loads from the 18 derailed cars were scattered. Despite the heavy damage, he was repaired by Union Pacific at its Cheyenne facility and returned to service until 1962.
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| − | * On May 16, 2019, No. 4014 partially derailed, with two axles from one set of drive wheels falling into the gauge, while entering the yard at Rawlins, Wyoming; his derailed drive wheels were returned to the rails within three hours.
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| − | ==Preservation==
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| − | Most of Big Boy's brothers were scrapped, but seven remain on static display—two indoors and five outdoors, under the elements. Big Boy himself was rebuilt to operating condition by Union Pacific's steam program.
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| − | ==Appearance in the TWC2 universe== | |
| − | On September 10, 2022, Big Boy mysteriously disappeared out of Union Pacific's Cheyenne, WY shops and into an unknown universe with the rest of the contestants. He was noted for being very big for a contestant. Meanwhile back in Cheyenne, his companion, No. 844, an FEF-3 engine, has been chosen to replace Big Boy with his excursions. Initially, not much was known as to how Big Boy can move freely with barely any tracks in the TCW2 universe, until it was discovered that tracks can mysteriously appear and disappear, thus enabling Big Boy to move freely. His supply of oil and water can also magically refill within a second.
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