The Big Boy locomotive gathered steam heading into Hazen last week in an old-fashioned display of the railroad’s role in developing the West. Scores of people gathered near the only railroad crossing at Hazen or stopped their vehicles on both sides of U.S.
Highway 50 to see world’s largest operating steam locomotive, the Union Pacific's legendary Big Boy No. 4014 that was built in the early 1940s to conquer mountains. The railroad didn’t make a major impact in central Nevada like it did along the northern tier of the Silver State more than 100 years ago.
Hazen first sprung up as a town to house laborers working on the Newlands Project, and Southern Pacific Railroad also built a large roundhouse in 1906 in the small town named after an aide to Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Although Hazen wasn’t a whistle-stop in its five-state 2024 Westward Bound Tour from Wyoming to California, the Big Boy engine and its long line of rail cars made an hour-stop for the crew to inspect the engine and perform safety checks.
The Big Boy engine, on an average, consumes 20 to 25 gallons of oil per mile depending on the terrain and other conditions. “The train stops every two hours, and the crew gets off the train to inspect the engine,” said UP spokesperson Robynn Tysver. “The locomotive can get very hot.
That big engine is a boiler.” Tysver said the engineers rely on a breeze to keep them cool, not an air conditioner. Daytime temperatures across the region have exceeded.