I came across this link today ( http://www.bigboy4018.com/news/middle.html ) announcing that Big Boy #4018 was going to be rebuilt to running order. The article appears to date back to 1998 or 99. I was curious if anything further ever developed from this endeavor or did it die on the vine?
Thanks in advance
AlbertoV05
I remember the talk about it,i think the whole idea died before it got underway.
That affair turned out to be a complete “fabrication”. It was posing as a restoration for a Hollywood movie, funded by big “producer” types. The Dallas Railroad Museumn got pulled along for awhile until they realized it had no substance. The “organizer” sold t-shirts and what-not souvenirs from a web site for a short while, then disappeared from sight. When some legitimate steam restorers chimed in that the engine would have had no place to run and that UP would never “bless” the idea, then people realized they had been listening to a pipe dream or an outright deception.
It sure got many people very excited for a time, and would have been the big event of the millenium - but it will never happen with a locomotive that large.