BY ANGELO VELOTTA
Gazette Newspapers
PAINESVILLE – “O beautiful, for spacious skies.”
On Monday, May 25, the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 left the station at Cheyenne Wyoming.
The locomotive travelled through the end of May and beginning of June, traversing cities such as Kearney, Nebraska, and Belle Plaine, Iowa.
South Holland, Illinois, then Argos, Indiana at the Ironwood Railroad Crossing, before Ft. Wayne, Indiana and onto Ohio.
The Big Boy rolled into Ohio first in Continental, Ohio, at 11:45 a.m. on Saturday, June 6, before following through to Fostoria, and then bouncing over Bellevue on Sunday.
The 18-foot-tall, 133-foot-long locomotive arrived in northeast Ohio on Monday, June 8.
“They had to raise bridges and make roundtables larger,” Lisa Lewins, Lake County History Center director, said.
The Big Boy arrived in Lorain at 11:45 a.m., and made a stop in Euclid at the Chardon Road crossing around 1:30 p.m.
Euclid marked the 36th stop for the Big Boy on its trail so far. An observer from Euclid said between two and three thousand people were gathered there.
The engine made surprise stop in Mentor before pulling through Painesville, just after 3 p.m. and enroute to Conneaut the next morning.
The Lake County Historical Society hosted an event held on their lawns at 415 Riverside Dr., in Painesville, from 11 a.m.-5 p.m., where over 2,000 people showed up to watch the historical moment.
“Almost one hundred volunteers. Thank you to everyone for being wonderful and patient,” Lewins said.
Guided tours of the center were available at both noon and 1 p.m., and a presentation on the history of the U.P. Big Boy was shown at 2 p.m. Food was also available for sale: the Big Boy Burger, hobo beans, hot dogs, chips, dessert and water and soda.
After cruising through Conneaut, the trail will continue through Pennsylvania and New York for an extended time, including being posted in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July.
The train is scheduled to return to Ohio on July 12, rolling through Conneaut, Rocky River, Fostoria and Continental, Ohio.
Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, dot the map along the way on the return trip home.
“For purple mountains majesty.”
And the Big Boy is set to pull back into the station in Cheyenne on the afternoon of July 29, completing its travel to commemorate America’s 250th Birthday.
For more information on the route, visit: https://www.up.com/about-us/history/steam/schedule.
