What Me Retire?

The Union Pacific Railroad in March 2011 conducted a contest for an Union Pacific Great Excursion Adventure. The contest was conducted via Facebook for individuals to vote on four different excursion routes: Tuscola Turn, Baton Rouge Rambler and Boise Express, and The Little Rock Express. The Little Rock Express route won with 76,217 votes vs. Tuscola Turn (73,175), Baton Rouge Rambler (18,0870) and Boise Express (11,213).

The Little Rock Express began May 29 with the arrival of Union Pacific's steam locomotive No. 844 in Kansas City, Mo., and concluded June 9 in Little Rock, Ark. UP 844 departed Cheyenne, WY, its home base, May 2 and arrived back in Cheyenne in late June.
The route from Little Rock back to Cheyenne was delayed and changed due to flooding from the Missouri River in Kansas. The display time in Little Rock was cut short so the excursion could get back to Cheyenne near it's planned return date.

Excursion Route.

The UP 844 is part of Union Pacific Railroad’s unique and historic Steam Locomotive fleet which consist of UP 844 and UP 3895. UP 844 significance is that it is the only steam locomotive that has never retired from active service. It was saved from being scrapped in 1960. It was chosen for restoration and is now used on company and public excursion trains. Most of them were equipped with distinctive smoke deflectors, sometimes called "elephant ears," on the front of the boiler. These were designed to help lift the smoke above the engine so the engine crew's visibility wasn't impaired when the train was drifting at light throttle.

The UP 844 is a Northern class steam locomotives, with a wheel arrangement of 4-8-4, and were used by most large U.S. railroads in dual passenger and freight service.

The other Union Pacific steam locomotive is UP 3895 Challenger. (See my blog titled" Largest Operating Steam Locomotive in the World - Union Pacific 3985 Challenger") It is unique in that it is the largest and most powerful steam locomotive in the world that is still in operation.

Union Pacific at one time owned 105 Challenger locomotives. Built between 1936 and 1943, the Challengers were nearly 122 feet long and weighed more than one million pounds. Articulated like their big brother, the Big Boy, the Challengers had a 4-6-6-4 wheel arrangement. It could run at top speeds of 120 MPH.

I took a lot of photos of the UP 844 during it's stop in St. Louis for the Little Rock Express Excursion on June 2, 2011. I was in Little Rock on June 3-6 but the UP 844 was still on it's route from St. Louis to Little Rock.

There was a large crowd of rail fans out to see and photograph the big locomotive.


Here is a good photo from the front. Notice the "elephant ears".
While stopped for display in St. Louis it was also serviced. Here water is being loaded to the water tender car from a fire hydrant.

Greasing the locomotive.
When an engine is stopped for display or servicing, it has a "Blue Flag" hung by the window which means this engine cannot be moved until the flag is removed.

Here is a close up photo of the large 80 inch driving wheels.
Close up of front.
Bell

Coal train rolling by UP 844.
See my blog titled" Largest Operating Steam Locomotive in the World - Union Pacific 3985 Challenger" for photos of the fleet of heritage cars that travel with Union Pacific Steam Excursions.

Since the entire route of the The Little Rock Express (Kansas City-St. Louis-Little Rock) followed the former Missouri Pacific Railroad route the excursion was accompanied by the Union Pacific Heritage engine UP 1982.
There are six Union Pacific Heritage deisels that are painted in the colors of the former railroads that were merged into the Union Pacific system. The engine is numbered with the year of merger of that railroad with Union Pacific. Thus UP 1982 for the year that the Missouri Pacific railroad was merged into Union Pacific. All these heritage engines are EMD SD70ACe engines which have AC traction motors providing a total of 4500 HP of power.

The other five heritage engines are:

Western Pacific UP 1983
Missouri-Kansas-Texas KATY UP 1988Chicago & North Western UP 1995
Southern Pacific UP 1996
Denver & Rio Grande 1989

There are several other special Union Pacific SD70ACe diesels that recognize people or events.

Breast Cancer Awareness UP 7400

Olympic Torch UP 2002
100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts UP 2010
President George H. W. Bush, 41st President UP 4141
Here are some good Youtube action videos of the UP 844 in action during
The Little Rock Express excursion. Good sounds of steam engine bark, steam whistles, bells and smoke! (Click on the link names to view the video - Turn up your sound!)

Leaving Kansas City UP 844 Highball Kansas City - 6-1-11

UP 844 Highball @ 75 MPH



UP 844 Arriving Kirkwood, MO - 6-2-11
Notice the carnival atmosphere at the historic Kirkwood Depot with many rail fans - Young and old!!

Union Pacific 844 leaves Kirkwood after a short stop. Notice the wheelspin and the black smoke.

UP 844 at Webster Groves - 6/2/2011

Union Pacific #844 leaving North Little Rock on June 9, 2011

Old Man Winter Comes A Calling!!!

All week the TV weather forecasters had been promising a major snow storm for Wednesday evening through Thursday afternoon. Amount of predicted accumulation at first started at 2-4 inches, then increased to 3-6 inches, and last night on the 5:00 p.m. news it was 4-8 for the metro area of St. Louis. Snow started falling about 7:00 p.m. last night. Jeff left the house about 11:30 p.m. because for the last 3 snows he has been working with a grounds maintenance company that provides snow removal for a large group of business and industrial parks. He is on the hand shoveling crews that clears walkways. He got home about 4:00 pm. today. He had spent 15 hours shoveling snow. Much of the St. Louis area got 8-12 inches. We still had light snow falling until about noon today. We got 10 inches at our house in St. Peters. This is our third snow this winter. We got 3-4 inches Christmas Eve and 3.5 inches on Jan. 10. But this is a long way from the Blizzard of 1982 when we got 21 inches over two days at our house in Webster Groves, Mo (about 30 miles southeast of where we live now).
This is what it looked like when we opened the garage door this morning about 8:30 a.m.
A winter wonderland.
Jeff's car was just about covered up.
Pat got busy with the snow blower while I used the shovel .
I will give our St. Peters Public Works department high marks. When we first looked out this morning we could tell that the plows had been through the neighborhood at least once. Even though there might have been a couple of inches of snow on the street it was not ten inches. I know they have plow the main arteries first before they can get back into the neighborhoods. By 2:00 p.m. they had returned to plow our street pretty clean. I went out about 3:30 p.m. to pick up Jeff and the St. Peters main arteries were snow free. At least two lanes of the expressways were clean. As it snowed hard continuously (1-2 inches per hour at times) from 7:00 p.m. last night till mid morning it keep the snow removal crews busy with 12 hour shifts. They were working hard to get the streets clean to bare pavement since the temperature will drop down to 5 degrees tonight. Anything left on the the streets will become dangerous black ice during the night.

Whether it's rain, sleet, or snow the mail must go through. We usually get delivery about 1:00 p.m. I think ours got delivered today about 5:00 p.m. I saw our mail truck one street over from ours at 4:30 p.m. when I came back from picking up Jeff.
The Malibu lights are just sticking out of the snow.
Neighbor's outdoor play equipment.
Back of our house.
Picnic anyone!!
Neighbor's Weber Kettle BBQ grill.
The bird houses in our trees along the bank fence are topped with snow.
The bird feeder outside our breakfast room bay window was snow covered and empty. I filled it so the birds would have a place to feed since the rest of their world is snow covered.
The squirrels or birds have a nice dry place to feed in this feeder.
Pat saw a squirrel trying to get across a back yard and it was having a lot of trouble. The snow was too deep and light for it to walk and she said it was sort of hopping and rolling to move.