You’ve got to admire Union Pacific’s steam program. I’ve been reading about it my entire life. There’s the 844 (or as we once knew it, the 8444), the 3985, and then the 4014. Big mainline locomotives, each of them, operating for the very same railroad they were built for. What’s not to love? But Union Pacific, historically speaking, never came closer to me than Omaha (and later, Chicago). Those locomotives might as well be operating on a different planet.
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Every August, our Boy Scout troop spent a weekend at a camp in northern Pennsylvania, with other troops from all over the region. We’d do the usual Scout-type stuff: learn a little woodcraft, trade patches, play a few pranks on the new kids, play Uno by the light of a Coleman lantern. When an all-day hike to Kinzua Bridge was announced during the 1982 camp, I signed up immediately. Hey, Kinzua Bridge, right? One-time tallest railroad bridge in the world? You bet I’m going.
Getting back turned out to be a little complicated.
Furniture Railroads 