This is the only photo I have ever seen of a Big Boy being dismantled.
Some people find these types of photos to be tough to look at.
I don't see it that way.
It's just part of the life cycle of a locomotive.
William Kratville even included a shot of a 4-6-6-4 being cut up at the Cheyenne Shops in his book "The Challenger Locomotives".
Posted a link rather than chancing a copyright infringement.
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Yikes! 
I wonder why they didn't recycle all that steel?
It looks like it was a picture of the "bone yard" near the time of the scraping of the engine. I imagine the steel would eventually have been sold for scrap, and thus recycled.
gunrunnerjohn posted:Yikes!
They did. That was just the cutting up operation in the boneyard. The scrap would have been collected, sorted and processed accordingly.
I don't know where this was taken. Some 4000s were sold to Geneva Steel in Vineyard, Utah for scrap. Others were scrapped at Cheyenne by UP workers.
Fortunately, eight of them escaped the torch altogether.
dkdkrd posted:Nick Chillianis posted:Fortunately, eight of them escaped the torch altogether.
Amazing percentage of rescue and celebration, indeed.
And not one NYC Hudson saved....perhaps the most iconic replica of the toy train industry. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Goose egg.
Imagine if a Dreyfus Hudson...or two or three...had been rescued...celebrated...restored...run to the delight of a gaping crowd. Wow!!...
I've read that the management of the the NY Central had almost no interest in the historical aspects of the railroad, or in preserving anything. Engines were scrapped with little thought given to preservation or donation. Very unfortunate.
The UP corporate mentality was different - much more in tune with, and proud of, it's history. Some would say sometimes even leaning a bit toward egotism, among those fans of the SP, all vestiges of which the UP seemed eager to erase after the merger. UP is to be commended, of course, for what it's done in keeping a branch to maintain and operate a collection of its historical locomotives. To qualify, though, all those engines have to have been, from their very beginning, a UP engine. All others need not apply. 
It came down to balance sheets: NYC heading toward bankruptcy, UP in the chips.
NICK, the picture is a bit hard to look at, because the life cycle doesn't include re-birth. Once their gone, the cycle ends with extinction. If only all that steel was recycled into a new Big Boy.
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