This image of Big Boy 4014 entering Spring, Texas on November 8, 2019, links to the Union Pacific web site explaining it's significance and historic trip around America. Click the above picture and get the story, engine specifications, schedule, and other important information.

The Big Boy steam locomotive, Union Pacific 4014, is making a run across America this year (2019). We wanted to see it in San Antonio, but thought large crowds might prevent an up-close experience. Then we discovered it would stop at the Elm Street crossing in Spring, Texas, while we visited a mere eight minutes north. Serendipity.

It was raining lightly on the morning of November 8, 2019, but the drive down I 45 was easy, and all went as planned until near the Elm Street crossing. Cars lined both sides of the road starting about two miles out. Traffic crawled past the place where Google Street View had shown potential parking outside the Cross Track Icehouse. With no hope of getting that close I went down West Hardy Road, paralleling the railroad tracks, heading south toward Houston. The strings of parked vehicles went with me, crowded together on grass and gravel beside the pavement.

Eventually, I gave up and turned onto East Louetta Road, heading back to the freeway. A parking spot appeared. I pulled in and climbed an embankment to the perfect vantage point, right on the tracks, amid a lightly scattered crowd. The rain lessened, and, thankfully, the train was a few minutes late. No word but "fate" suffices.

This image of the Big Boy entering Spring, Texas links to the page devoted to the Big Boy class of locomotives on the Rail Giants Train Museum website. Great train-effect mp3.

I took some practice shots with my camera, and ran a short video of the crowd to make sure everything was working. Before long, here came the Big Boy. It was visible about a mile off, bordered beneath a nearby overpass, steam pouring sublimely into the sky. I framed it on my phone, pressed the button and watched it all the way down to my position, turning as it passed, and tracking it all the way north to the switch below Elm Street. The experience was more than I'd hoped for, the magnificent machine rumbling by, the steam descending to enshroud me, and the cars clattering past like an articulated phantom from ages auld lang syne. I clicked off the video, walked to my car, and drove back up to The Woodlands.

An hour later, I learned the truth. My camera had been in snapshot mode, not video. I got one picture of the engine approaching from the far south, and another of it disappearing to the north. My only video showed a few seconds of the crowd. I'd been undone by wearing the wrong glasses, which made guesswork of the controls.

This is what I thought the beginning of my video would look like.

I believed I was stopping the video at this point.

That was disappointing, but I've been rescued. Youtube videos, successfully made by those who didn't poke the wrong buttons, show the spectacle I witnessed. My video would have been better, I'm sure, but these viewable videos show something mine couldn’t have. Me. I've collected on this page three videos that show not only the storied train passing my position, but me earnestly, futilely, trying to capture the moment. I've also included some links that place the train historically, plus a few more Spring, Texas videos.

Whoever took this video captured a panoramic view of my location as the Big Boy rolled by. I am visible near the center of the image, right side of the rightmost tracks, wearing a beige jacket and black cap, near the last pickup in a string of parked cars.

Herewith and hereafter, a collection of images and videos from Spring, Texas, and around the country. Please note, a click on the banner at the top of this page will tell the story of why the train consist (the cars in the train) included a locomotive enscribed with the name of George H. W. Bush, 41st president. Clicking the picture below the banner will show a Youtube video of the trip from El Paso to Houston, just before the stop in Spring.

The first three videos below show Big Boy's passage through the spot where I was standing, and record my futile attempt to get my own video.