All you steam lovers UP844 will be in St louis arround 5:45pm on March 27th & will depart the next morning through Dupo & down the east side river route to Arkansas. UP Steam has an app for the iphone availible it provides scheduling as well as updates when you are chasing the engine in the field.
Thats if the wheels don`t fall off of it first…cracks were in the drivers and were repaired by an uncertified welder at the strasburg rr in feb 2011.
Mt grandson and I are great fans of the 844. We chased it for a day two times here in Texas, once in 2006 (he was 5) and then again (I think) in 2010. It was a blast, hard to tell which of us had more fun.
I’ve got a bit of history here (I may have shared it before). My Dad’s Dad was a UP switcher engineer in Sidney NE in the 30’s-40’s. My great grandfather (Dad’s mother’s Dad) was a UP supervisor on the tracklaying of the 2nd transcontinental line on the UP in the late 1800’s. My Mom’s dad worked in the Phila Baldwin locomotive works (died there in an accident in about 1926). I guess there were 2 Baldwin works around Philly, so I’m not sure if the 844 was built in the one where he worked.
I traveled from NYC to Sidney NE(via Chicago) in 1955 to visit grandma, when the 844 was active. I presume it was possible the 844 wnet through Sidney while we wer there…at the extreme if it was in passenger service (then) maybe we were behind it)!
Anyway, kudos to UP for keeping 844 (it’s beautiful) and the Challenger going! I hope to see the Challenger in operation some day.