UNION PACIFIC

 

Looking up from the field where Artica takes place, a viewer is confronted by one of the many freight trains crossing the Mississippi into St. Louis. Note the man in the yellow tee shirt riding in the front. Exciting or scary?                  

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

The Big Boy locomotive didn't travel alone. Several other cars trailed behind, including a modern engine for some extra push. The companion cars didn't seem to have a purpose other than to show off the primary colors of the Union Pacific railroad. Why or how would you experience the UP? Private rail companies don't carry passengers in this country.              

BIG BOY

So here's the reason for the expedition. Back in the 1940s the Union Pacific Railroad built 25 gigantic locomotives called Big Boys. There are now several in museums and this one, Number 4014, in working order that occasionally go out on tour. It passed through St. Louis Sunday and Monday.

The thing is simply gigantic, too big to get all of it in this picture.  132 feet / 40 meters long and 1.2 million pounds / 544,310 kilograms! See https://www.up.com/heritage/steam/4014/. It spent Sunday parked on a major railway passage on the edge of downtown, inside a fenced enclosure. I would have had to wait an hour or more in heat and brilliant sun to get in, which is beyond me these days. I took this by reaching to the top of a high chain link fence, propping my camera on top, pointing it in the general direction and hoping for the best.

Big Boy made a brief stop in the suburbs yesterday on its way west and I got some better shots.               

Midwest Urban

.

Scenes from the industrial and railroad area south of the Arch. No shying away from the gritty, ironic side of the city. Read this as a diptych or any way you like.

One irony is that this is not a dangerous area, just post-industrial quiet. Not much going on, nothing valuable, no homeless, no drug dealers. I wonder how the taggers made those two-story tall letters without being noticed. The building is in plain view. The boxcar below was a short distance away. This little bit of America could use some rebuilding.

The Union Pacific Depot

.

A busy Union Pacific railroad line used to cut straight across the west side of Marysville, blocking traffic on U.S. Route 36 many times a day. A few years ago the tracks were moved further out of town and a bridge built to carry the highway across them.

There was a beautiful railroad depot that now sits empty along the old right of way. The Spanish Colonial architecture is striking. Some area residents would like to rehab it and use it for a community center and are trying to raise money. The U.P. has no use for it. If the funds are not available in the next couple of months the building will be demolished. But there is good news! On Tuesday night the city council decided to buy the building and then resell it to preservationists. An important part of Marysville's heritage will live on.