ring cities across the country. 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! >> for many years, a 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 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. a big boy is what is known as 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 wheel. unarguably, 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. back in the days -- the train cars were physically smaller. they weren't big like today. they had some big cars, but 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 the locomotive, it will be restored to the same functionality when it was brand-new. he will take it down as far as

we need to, assess everything we need to, and dismantle and make 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 two 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 all 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 lubricator lines that you can see up here. many of those lubricator 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 rod 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. it's a very good locomotive 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. union pacific 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 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 an error, but it gives you a sense of how good the locomotive was. this was one of the last 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 sat in a 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. over here is where the firemen would operate his controls to fire the locomotive. you can see the firebox here. 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 cab and the crew, the floor, that diamond plate, has been worn down, and they probably at a time in the 1940's or 1950's

welded up little pieces to kind of enhance 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. if we are not able to do that, we will use a 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? we had an example of the locomotive, a new locomotive we were trading 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 a t-rex, a living and breathing t-rex 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. i've 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 trains 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 than the world's largest steam locomotive? >> find out where c-span's local content vehicles are going next online at c-span.org. your watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span three. at 8:30 a.m.

eastern on american history tv, we will take you live to fort mchenry in baltimore where he ceremony commemorating the 200th anniversary of the star-spangled banner. :t will feature remarks from powell and the flag raising exactly 200 years after francis scott key saw a large american flag hoisted above the fort which inspired him to later create the u.s. national anthem. compose what would later become the national anthem. each week, american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation fell college professors. you consider in on the lectures saturday evening at 8 p.m. and midnight eastern. next, professor lori bogle talked about the american soldiers taken prisoner during the korean war. professor bogle explained how the warring nations used prisoners to intimidate their enemies and described the effects of captivity and attempts by the enemy at political indoctrination.