A ride to Strasburg to catch "Big Boy"

 Sunday, September 6

After lunch at Bob W's home, four of us got on our respective motorcycles/scooter to ride over to the vicinity of Strasburg and Byers, CO to see the Union Pacific's 4014 Steam Locomotive pass by on its way to Wyoming.

Yep, it was Brigitta's turn for exercise

(1987 R80 BMW)

More info here on Big Boy: LINK, it's apparently one of very few remaining locomotives of it's era and size....1.2 million pounds in weight, impressive.

After seeing the traffic debacle near Deer Trail, CO....we doubled back along CO36 and stopped at a local grain elevator run by Cargill Inc.  There we awaited the arrival of the train.  Not too long afterwards, it was there, chugging along slowly.

Note: no sound, was using Thing Two's camera as my Sony HX80 is in the shop for repairs.  The Nikon D5300 I was using had the microphone turned off and I didn't realize this beforehand.

Note the two sets of wheels on the locomotive, due to its length, the wheels "articulate" for the sharper curves.

Once the train had passed, and the bumper to bumper congestion on CO36 eased off a bit (lots of people headed towards Strasburg where the train was scheduled to briefly stop); we too saddled up and rode towards Strasburg.

Jim M. and Dale B. look for the squashed pennies and

coins they'd pre-positioned on the track prior to the

train's arrival.

In the traffic debacle that was Strasburg, we found a place for the motorcycles, then we all split to find a good spot to shoot pics of the train as it pulled out.

Starting to leave Strasburg, CO

I was, quite surprised, by the amount of people that showed up to look at the train.  

The train gone westward, we waited a bit for the traffic to leave the normally sleepy town of Strasburg.

We rode home via CO36 to Watkins, and then took the road south to Quincy Rd and from there we each went our separate ways near our home neighborhood.

Interesting sight, this large locomotive, talk about "Big Iron".....