it still is. we run 100 trains a day through here. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> all weekend long american history tv is featuring cheyenne, wyoming. it was the home of the democratic governor nellie taylor ross, the first female governor in the united states. governor for two years from 1925 to 1927. our charter cable partners worked with c-span's city tour staff when we recently traveled there to explore the area's history. learn more all weekend here on

american history tv. >> union pacific has been working on this for years. seeing it arrived here in cheyenne today is nothing but phenomenal. cheyenne, this big boy is home! this big boy is home! a for many years, generation of people have asked the question, will a big boy operate? when will the union pacific restore a big boy locomotive? now that the time has come, they can't believe it. many people in our travels, when we went to las vegas, salt lake city, california, while we were

at the l a county fair, we were working on it. we wanted people to come up. we wanted to engage them while we were working on the locomotive. what are you doing? we are going to restore this. many of them, their jaws dropped. that is why it is exciting. a big boy will run again. known as is what is the world's largest steam locomotive. when i say that, i'm inviting people to say, wait a minute, this locomotive was bigger or heavier or could burn more coal and produce more power. this locomotive weighed more on this wheel or that we'll. -- w heel. on arguably, it is the world's largest steam locomotive. 600 tons, nearly 7000 horsepower. you can't get much bigger than that. they were developed in the late 1930's. the first series was built in

1941. during the war, they needed five more. they built a second class of five in 1944. the traine days -- cars were physically smaller. they weren't big like today. but have some big cars, 50-60 tons was a heavy load. today, our cars are 130 tons. they had a different type of bearing that was harder to pull. in this day, this locomotive was designed to take the place of two locomotives, which is why they developed that. what we do when we restore the locomotive, it will be restored to the same functionality and it was brand-new. he will take it down as far as we need to, assess everything we and makeand dismantle new and replace with new where needed. it will be a massive undertaking. when the locomotive is restored, it is going to be a fully functional machine that will function in every aspect just

like it did in the days of operation. the big boy is an articulated locomotive. it is to in one. we are looking at the front edge and or the front engine bed. all of this you see is one. this is a cylinder, this is a valve -- this is cast as one integral piece, and it goes all the way back to that second cylinder that you can see. that is the foundation of the front part of this engine. when we started to work on the big boy, we had to identify various lubricate her lines that you can see up here. many of those lubricate her lines were still good. they just looked old. we went through, and there is a process, and we rehabilitated a lot of those lines. we took off all of these components that we had to. when this is going down the track, you will see these connecting rods.

it's a fascinating motion. this route here is called the main rod. very heavy. we had to take that off, disassemble it, take this portion off, clean and service this, just a lot of hard work and a lot of labor. a very good-looking motive design, but when you look at this compared to the 844, you will notice a lot of similarity in the design. that was part of the evolution of the steam locomotive. developed a lot of these parts following years of research and development, developing just the right style of component, the right size so it could do the work necessary to produce the power necessary. this is the first series. this was the 15th one built. that was a bit of a factor in the decision to obtain this locomotive. the first decision was its boiler.

living in the beautiful southern california climate, very favorable to metal, and what the deterioration happens happens very slowly as opposed to locomotives in wet climates. the number 15 has all sorts of modifications and upgrades that don't necessarily reflect on the drawings and blueprints and design. the manufacturing process gets better as time goes along. when you look at this locomotive, one of the first things i was looking at was how the two frames were set up and the condition of the wheels. all of that we can fix if there is deviation or in error, but it gives you a sense of how good the locomotive was. this was one of the lasts of the big boys to operate. there were a whole series of circumstances in the lifecycle of the locomotive that made the locomotive available, but in the back of my mind, it makes me think that this locomotive was a good machine. so far, that has borne itself

out. we came here without incident. the locomotive set of museum for 52 years. my crew and i dismantled certain parts of it. certain parts we couldn't. we could only climb underneath and clean and change the oil. we came 1300 miles without an incident. i take that back -- one of the windows fell out. we picked it up. it wasn't broken. we are inside the cab of the big boy where you can see we started to take off or take apart some of the steam valves. we are just taking those off, inventory. we are going to use those as a pattern to make new parts. a lot of the steam valves and everything, they are becoming a little bit rare today. that particular design of steam valve. when we duplicate those, it's nice to have a component in

pretty good shape that we can use for a pattern. the air brakes -- this is where the engineer operates the locomotive. the firemen where would operate his controls to fire the locomotive. here.n see the firebox you can see all the way down. that is where we were standing a few moments ago. you can see the many years of people walking in the cap and floor, thate diamond plate, has been worn at a and they probably time in the 1940's or 1950's welded up little pieces to kind of enhanced that antiskid surface. as much as we like the old, original parts, we are going to

need to replace this. i don't know if we will be able to duplicate this, but i would like to have this style of diamond plate manufactured for this purpose so it's the original configuration or design. that,are not able to do we will use in modern diamond plate, much as we did with the 844 locomotive. i was in california speaking to one of our operating superintendents, and a lot of people on the railroad, they love the railroad and understand it from a day-to-day standpoint, and he was having a difficult time. he asked me, why are we doing this? had an example of the locomotive, a new locomotive we were treading for this one, and he said, why are you giving this nice one away? i said, wait until you see this locomotive. i said, it's like pick any big zoo in our country, and if that

zoo had an opportunity to bring back that he wrecks, a living and breathing key wrecks just - t-rex the movie - just like in the movie, that would be the most popular zoo in the world. that is a good example. the big boy is known throughout the world. seen foreign publications in germany, australia, great britain where they've got articles about this restoration project and the interest that this is generating because it was never going to happen. this locomotive will serve as public relations ambassador, just like the 844. a locomotive is a fascinating machine. who doesn't like trains? at one time in our lives, boys and girls, they can relate to trains.

we have all kinds of cartoons and movies and books that talk about ratings and the story that the railroad tells. it's a fascinating story. as you get older, your interests branch off. my interest hasn't. thousands and thousands of people love locomotives. what better public relations vehicle could a railroad have been the world's largest steam locomotive? >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring cheyenne, wyoming. team recentlytour traveled there to learn more about its rich history. learn more at c-span.org/localcontent. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend and c-span3. >> 200 years