The UP "Big Boy" locomotive traveled from Portola to Roseville via Oroville and the former Western Pacific line last Thursday, much to the dismay of people who assumed it would travel between Marysville and Roseville over the former Southern Pacific route and thus missed out on action shots. At Roseville, a two-day celebration was held on Friday and Saturday, and Lisa and I did a 300-mile day trip to Roseville on Saturday to see the circus.

( The Railroad Circus Takes Over Roseville )

After leaving Roseville, we drove to Auburn, where we stopped at the Raley's grocery store where we have stopped before. I bought a 12-inch salami sandwich and a jug of lemonade. Lisa also got stuff including cold drinks. (We'd brought lots with us in the 12V refrigerator but drank most of them on the way down. It was still very hot and very dry, even though not as bad as the previous week.) As Lisa drove back toward home, I inhaled half of the sandwich and all of the lemonade and felt much better, as the sun was really getting to me.

We passed through Colfax, where we had considered laying up should we find ourselves too worn out to make it home. We'd packed a minimal kit for an overnight stay should we have needed to do so, but we decided that we should be able to make it home today.

At Blue Canyon, Lisa and I swapped and I drove us the rest of the way home. We stopped at Donner Summit Rest Area, which in our opinion has been ruined by fences that keep people from accessing the picnic areas and trails that used to be available here. We also made another stop in Reno for a rest break and more cold drinks, but our eyes were firmly set on getting home, which we did before about 6 PM.

That was a very tiring day, especially as we're still not fully recovered from the Westercon trip, but I'm glad we made it. We fell into bed without having to worry about alarms, because the next step of the Big Boy's journey wasn't scheduled to be in the Reno area until around 5 PM.

This month's episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories is about the first steam locomotives to operate in the Americas. These locomotives had only short and unsuccessful careers, and one of them seems to have come to an explosive end when first operated.

We cut it close, but we managed to get an episode of Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories published in January.



Yes, I know this is being pedantic, but we've learned from answering questions from people that most people don't know any of this. For example, one of the people with whom we've discussed how trains work thought that there was a crew in every one of the locomotives on a passing train. Some movies we've seen with trains in them completely misunderstand how trains work, up to the point where the issue causing the drama in the product simply can't happen. For example, the brakes on trains aren't operated hydraulically like those in most automobiles, so showing hydraulic fluid leaking from the locomotive leading to it running away just can't happen. (Trains can and have run away, but not because of that.) Indeed, thinking about how train brakes work means we'll probably do an episode about this that explains how they work, why Hollywood usually gets it wrong, and how you can still have drama while still getting the details right.

Incidentally, there's something new on the RLMS "set" this episode. Can you see it?

The "little BN" local got a new locomotive to replace the clanger that sat broken down for a couple of weeks. For a while, it looked like it wasn't going to make a difference.

( At least it didn't start clanging )

I was busy with Day Jobbe, so I didn't hear how they managed to do so, but eventually they got the leak on the locomotive fixed sufficiently that they could pull cars from the yard and go on about their business. They weren't here last night, so I guess they must have made it into Sparks Yard, and Fernley Yard was mostly free of cars for the first time in weeks, giving us a clear view of the tracks.

Why BNSF keeps sending defective locomotives out here, I don't know.

I wrote a few days ago about how BNSF sent an (apparently) freshly-painted locomotive 502 out to serve as the power for the "little BN" job that serves the Fernley area. Crews often park this locomotive across the street from our house while a contractor shuttles the crews back and forth to Sparks Yard, rather than taking it back to Sparks. This is usually okay, but last night things went wrong. Not catastrophically wrong, but very annoyingly wrong.

( Ring My Bell )

The main bell on the locomotive rang all night long. It never stopped. Every now and then the secondary bell sounded and the engine attempted another restart, but nothing happened, and the bell kept ringing.

After an hour of putting up with the bell, Lisa called BNSF's 24-hour alert line, as it's their locomotive. BNSF told her to call Union Pacific, as the locomotive is sitting on tracks owned by Union Pacific and is apparently operated by crews contracted from UP. They asked her for the cross-street where this was happening, which is very easy: the corner of Front and Center Streets. The UP agent told Lisa that they would send someone right out. They never did.

Around midnight, a Lyon County Sheriff car turned up. The deputy examined the locomotive for around twenty minutes, then went away. Now, the Sheriff's department is supposed to have the emergency contact information for the railroad. They might even have contacted them, but nobody came to fix it.

( Close Up and Noisy )

As of 9:30 AM Sunday, nearly twelve hours since it started ringing, the locomotive's bell was still clanging away. Lisa did not sleep very well at all last night. At this point, we expect it will ring either until the locomotive's batteries die (which might take a long time; locomotives have big batteries) or the little BN crew shows up. We can only hope that they will be out today, as they typically work a Sunday-Thursday schedule these days.

Late this afternoon, the "big BN" train came to Fernley to drop off/pick up cars from the Fernley House Tracks. Hearing it arrive, I went out on the porch and realized that the lead locomotive had a special paint scheme. It was coming in slowly enough that I had time to grab my camera phone and activate the camera and get a couple of shots.

( Has it Really Been 25 Years? )

When I ready about this special BNSF paint scheme in the current issue of Trains, I hoped that one of the units would come by our house, and I was lucky that it arrived with the timing necessary for me to get a picture of it.