Big Boy and the Tomcat a Cautionary Tale

The Big Boy and the Tomcat--A cautionary Tale.

Big Titles:  Why am I so picky about a thing like this?  The bottom line is that humans are more important than machines.  A little thing like this can shift the focus where it should not be.

Fans love giving big titles to retired machines.  King of the rail, King of the flight deck, King of the sea and so forth.

Meet the Alco 4-8-8-4  4000 series ‘Big Boy’.   That wasn’t her nickname at first.  She was going to be called the Wasatch type until someone chalked the name Big Boy on the smokebox of one of the engines.  The unfortunate name stuck like flies to flypaper.   When the engine was retired, Union Pacific allowed a filmmaker to make a film called Last of the Giant with their name on it that put all its focus on the engine give her big blown up titles like King of the rail and using pronouns such as ‘him’.  It took the focus off the people behind the machine.  Now the locomotive has taken fictional proportions in the eyes of many of her fans.  We are hard pressed to find any material on the engineers, firemen and other employees that made this engine happen.  All we have left is the engine herself.  Very little memory is left of the men that made the Alco 4000 series possible.  I am hard pressed to find a piece on the labor of love that made this monster run.  The 4000 has a host of fans that post like 9 year olds.  The post like the engine is Thomas.  I even had one get up my nose because I refused such childish nonsense.

Let’s take another Locomotive, the GS-4 Daylight.  Her name wasn’t blown out of proportion despite her remarkable beauty.  We have the history of the human element behind this train preserved for our enjoyment.

How does that relate to the F-14?  She was retired in 2006.  Iran is the only country that flies her now. There are already fans trying to give her big titles and personifying her in ways the crews and maintainers never saw her.  She’s that passive aggressive machine that needed many maintenance hours to get off the flight deck.  The the focus is already shifting from the heroes the flew and maintained her to just the airplane.  Many fans are forgetting or refusing to recognize the human labor of love that went into these machines.

No machine should ever wear the designation of, Sir or Brother. They are not officers, they hold no rank, not did they bleed on an aircraft to get her flying.  Those sacred titles belong to military personnel.  King should be a honorary designator given to a human, not a machine.

Big titles given to machines minimizes the people that put all the hard work into them.

We should be honoring the men and women that put the Tomcat in the air.  People are priceless.  The sad truth is that machines are expendable.  Their job is to serve people.

Let’s not let ‘Big Boy’ happen to the Tomcat.  Let’s preserve her history as it is.  Let’s keep the squadron stories alive.  Books like Bye, Bye, Baby do an excellent job of that.  

The Steam Engine Personality

The words Steam Engine conjure up images of flashing side rods and belching steam thundering down the rails. Those of us that have had the privilege of riding a steam train recall the grit and smell of the coal smoke. Of the larger locomotives there a certain fury in the the way they move high balling down the track.  There are kitschy films out there that have presented a certain public image of the the greatest locomotives based on their model names.  The classic Last of the Giants is a case in point.  This doesn't scratch the surface of what a steam engine is really like.

Today perception of locomotives is based off children's films like Thomas the Tank Engine.  These films personify the locomotive in ways that are a far cry from what a steam engine is really like.

In reality the steam engine is the opposite of the businesslike diesel locomotive we are accustomed to seeing.  A steam engine personality is distinctly female--a prim female that has to be constantly pampered.  This include the giant articulateds such as the Yellowstones and even the 4000 series 'Big Boy'.   The steam engine a temperamental delicate thing.  She had to be awakened carefully.  She has to be warmed up first before the fire is even lit inside of her boiler- lest her fire box and crack and her staybolts come loose.  And while she is on the road her fire has to tended and not allowed to go out.  She isn't allowed to dry out either.  Putting her to bed is a slow and laborious process as well.

Steam engines are things of beauty and their crews felt affection for them in much the same way a race car driver would feel affection for his racing car.  They would often is as much or more time with their locomotive as they would their wives.

Thomas and Last of the Giants may live on the word of film, but that isn't the hard reality when it comes to the world of Steam.  Such films may be enjoyable to some viewers, but they are as out of touch with the world of Steam as Tiki Culture is out of touch with Maori Culture.