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In Virginia Lee Burton’s classic 1939 children’s book “Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel,” Mulligan often boasted that his steam shovel, Mary Anne, “could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week. Mulligan never gets the chance to prove his boast because electric, diesel and gasoline shovels have taken away nearly all of Mary Anne’s work.
When Burton wrote those words, she was capturing the painful sunset of an era. It was a lament for the living, breathing machines of American progress, cast aside for the newest efficient technology.
For more than half a century, that sentiment seemed final.
But this week in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the Union Pacific Railroad’s Big Boy No. 4014 offered a thunderous rebuttal. Much of the credit belongs to its engineer, Ed Dickens, who has spent his adult life serving his country, first in the military and now by helping bring this historic steam locomotive back to life. In doing so, he has shown that Americans still value hard work, shared history and community. Across the country, crowds have gathered along city streets, farmland and smalltown rail lines just to watch Dickens and Big Boy thunder past.
Rolling into town earlier this week at 1.2 million pounds and 133 feet long, this steel titan proved that steam engines are not just relics of the past; they still hold a profound utility. Its modern utility is something much more vital to the nation’s health: It serves as a massive, kinetic connective tissue for the American spirit, pulling a fragmented culture together in a way no modern diesel locomotive ever could.
Jim Vena, CEO of Union Pacific, told the Washington Examiner at Norfolk Southern’s Rose Yard that it has been remarkable to watch people across the country respond to Big Boy’s journey. The locomotive has traveled 7,000 miles through 14 states, nearly 100 cities and countless small towns and stretches of farmland as part of America’s 250th anniversary celebration.
Like Mike Mulligan’s beloved Mary Anne, the Big Boys were built for a crisis. First fired up in December 1941, these Western giants were engineered to haul heavy wartime freight over Utah’s punishing Wasatch Range, keeping the veins of the American war effort pumping.
But by the early 1960s, the fires were dropped. The railroad world, like the construction yards in Burton’s book, chose the quiet efficiency of diesel.
The resurrection of No. 4014 is a fitting symbol of the enduring strength of the working-class communities it visits. Modern experts had widely dismissed the idea of restoring the 600-ton locomotive to working order as impossible.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.), who was in attendance more as a rail fan than a governor, told the Examiner that at one point, Altoona had more employees in the railroad industry than any other part of Pennsylvania.
“Trains are part of the fabric of who we are as Pennsylvanians, and I think … with Big Boy making its way through Pennsylvania, with over a quarter of a million people so far having turned out to see it, (you) recognize that,” he said.
It was entirely fitting that this mechanical homecoming took place in Altoona, the legendary heart of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Founded in 1849, the city was built to help conquer the Allegheny Mountains. Five years later, immigrant laborers armed with picks and shovels carved out the Horseshoe Curve, opening a vital commercial route to the West.
In the final pages of the children’s book, Mike and Mary Anne find a new purpose, with the old steam shovel becoming the heating heart of Popperville’s town hall. No. 4014 has found a similarly noble calling. As it leaves the railyard and winds through the historic curves of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains, it will trail white steam across the blue sky and leave thousands of spectators with memories to last a lifetime.