 By Jacquielynn Floyd Dallas Morning News Longer than two mobile homes, heavier than 300 pickups and comatose for the last 33 years, Big Boy lumbered to life Thursday with astonishing ease. For a few magic minutes, the 56-year-old antique was the mightiest steam locomotive rolling the rails. And to an adoring crowd that watched with the awe due an Apollo liftoff, it mattered not one whit that Big Boy was hitched to a proletarian yellow diesel and rolled up and down the same stretch of track. It was history, awakened from the dead. "It’s so awesome," murmured one bystander, as dazed as if an office building had uncoupled from its neighbor and rumbled down Commerce Street. Big Boy is the 600-ton, cast-iron crown jewel in the Age of Steam Railroad Museum’s collection at Fair Park. Since 1965, the gargantuan locomotive has been a popular "static display"- you can look at it, but it doesn’t do anything - but Thursday’s short trip was the first leg of its journey back to working order. When its $2 million, 11-month overhaul is finished, it will be the world’s biggest operating steam locomotive. It will also be a movie star. Part of the restoration is being underwritten by an independent, Dallas-based film company that plans to use the locomotive in a feature film to be shot in North Texas and Colorado. "It didn’t even groan," said an exultant Bob LaPrelle, the museum’s executive director, after the locomotive’s eagerly anticipated trial run to loosen up its long-dormant mechanism. "That’s very good news for the restoration. The museum has taken really good care of it." No one would characterize the iron leviathan as fragile or delicate, but the locomotive is irreplaceable. Built in 1942 to haul freight trains over the Wasach Mountains on the daunting Cheyenne-to-Ogden run, there were only 25 locomotives produced in the ALCO 4000 series, informally called by railroad wonks around the world. Eight of them survive in displays around the country, but Dallas’ Big Boy in the best condition by far - a testament not only to its care but to the local climate, benevolent at least to large iron objects. "To see an engine in this condition that has been sitting for over 30 years is pretty amazing," said Gary Bensman, an Osceola, Wis., expert in locomotive restoration whose firm will restore Big Boy. The job will require an acre of floor space to lay out the 30,000 engine parts Mr. Bensman will have to dismantle. Film Producer Danny Bishop of Mc-Kinney, Texas who teaches film at Southern Methodist University, has had Big Boy on the brain for months, working on Continued on Page 2 or Back to Main Site |
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