Got this from a relative, the engine has been in USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/n ... 139662001/

The New York Times has an article today on the Golden Spike Celebration at Promontory Point, which featured the long overdue recognition of the contribution of the Chinese railroad workers to the building of the Central Pacific.
The online article opens with a nice aerial shot of 4014 and 844, but unfortunately no accompanying explanation of just what you're looking at and how it relates to the headline.

And a new venue.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/techno ... uIre6QZ8Bo

According to this article, the Big Boy was a "train" that made it to Promotory for the celebration !!!!

Nothing like doing a bit fact checking.

Bob H

These wrong labels are important to us but not to 99.999999999999% of the general public.

The good news is that between the rebirth of the Big Boy and the 150th. celebration of the Golden Spike the Union Pacific Railroad generated tons of positive national press and to them and their shareholders that's what its all about.

I say way to go UPRR !!!

Ross Rowland

According to the last Book of Rules I had before retiring....a “train” was defined as one or more locomotives either with or without cars and displaying markers.
So even a light engine move is technically a train.

Keith

I would point out, the Popular Mechanics article is very enthusiastic about steam powered locomotives and the immensity of the 4014. It notes eight of the survivors and talks a bit about condition after retirement. It was refreshingly positive and laudatory to UPRR for the restoration.
NS ---> Rebuild 1218
CSX --> Rebuild 1601
CPR --> Fire up 2816
CNR --> Wake up and smell the coffee.
WMSR -> Rebuild ...oh, never mind.

Shouldn't that be "Promentory Summit?"

My wife, and several other people I know around here, cannot differentiate between a movie and a TV show, nor a catalog and a magazine.
It's something that basic trips people up, I have zero issues with calling a locomotive a train.

I can get bugged by wrong terminology as much as anybody, but if a story is as enthusiastic and as positive as this one, I won't complain!!

I'll say. Anyway, the writer may well know the proper terminology, but has an editor who insists the lexicon be dumbed down for the 'average reader.'

It's a sign of the times, with the railroad industry receding from public view. To those who grew up during WWII, Everybody either rode the train or had a relative who worked for the railroad. Terms like locomotive, coach, sleeper, diner, and caboose were common parts of our language. Now it has all constricted to the all inclusive term TRAIN. The idea that RAILROAD trains run on RAILS has similarly been lost; now it's just TRAIN TRACK, no matter what part they might be talking about. And, with about half of our population having some sort of college degree, editors just can't come to terms with calling the driver an ENGINEER. Thankfully they've mostly adopted the traditional term CONDUCTOR rather than the European DRIVER, although that may eventually change.

We ourselves are going to eventually have to come to grips with this in our signage and other materials; we will have to define what we think should be common terms or risk speaking a language our audience can't understand.

All that you spoke of is part of the reason I tried to sell a TV series about the adventures of railroad men.

Unfortunately, I couldn't sell it to save my soul.

I still think we could use something like that, and that it could be successful. It could even be made relatively cheaply, as Kelly Lynch (nathansixchime) was able to show with a famous Coca-Cola ad that was done on speculation.

I doubt we would find the success of a Star Wars or Star Trek, but how much would we need? "Too much" success in that line may be too much of a good thing anyway.

But I wonder how we would find the venue we would need? The venue would justify the effort.

Just something for reference.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=36158

Railroad series on TV have already been done. History Channel had "Extreme Trains", Discovery in Australia had "Railroad Australia" which was similar to our "Railroad Alaska." Too much dramatization of events that would never actually happen in the modern RR environment IMHO.

Robert

None of the examples you cited were what I would consider doing the job right; rather, they were doing it on the cheap, and in the "reality show" format as well.

Sadly, to even begin to see how things should be done, you essentially have to go back to the 1930s and films like "Danger Lights," "Other Men's Women," and "Whispering Smith," and even then there are things I would do differently.

I would consider, if doing a theatrical film, an adaptation of something like "One Way to Eldorado," "Fiddle Hill," or even "High Tension." My own effort drew much from Herbert Hamblen's "The General Manager's Story," though I brought it up to modern times--which in my case, meant going from the 1870s and 1880s to the 1940s, and on a Pocahontas coal road with big engines!

The thing I am excited about it that there will be an excursion in October from SoCal