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Union Pacific # 3985 The Pyro Express

Pocatello, Idaho, was about to celebrate it's one hundred year anniversary as a town. The Union Pacific agreed to send it's coal burning Challenger Locomotive, a 4-6-6-4 wheel arrangement numbered 3985 to the town to celebrate. The world's largest operating steam locomotive would travel from Cheyenne, Wyoming, it's home base to Pocatello for display and then for a special passenger train down in Utah as it's first public excursion. With all this going on it seemed like a good reason to visit my brother Bruce up in Pocatello. He managed to get three tickets for the excursion down in Utah so my friend Bill Compton could come along. I took the Desert Wind to Ogden having a nice peaceful trip on Amtrak before taking Greyhound to Pocatello.

The day before the 3985 was going to run into Pocatello, Bruce and I went wood cutting outside of town. Following a very heavy and intense thunderstorm we managed to get the truck stuck in the mud. Bruce hiked out and about three hours later after I was done communing with nature he returned in the Pinto to pick me up and we returned to town. The next day we went out to Montpelier where we encountered the engine for the first time before we left town to find a photo location. At this first runby I learned an important lesson, "Never look back at a coal burning locomotive or else you will get hot cinders in your eyes!" We followed it most of the way back into Pocatello getting several more excellent pictures because we had scouted our photo location a few days before.

We went back to get the truck out of the mud and found it absolutely dry being very easy to get back onto the paved road. That night I went with Bruce to work to do a little night time photography of the Challenger and was invited up into the locomotive's cab for a full night of steam railroading stories.

The Union Pacific Railroad was having their Family Days while the rest of Pocatello was having the city's 100 year anniversary celebration and ceremony. The UP ran a special train from the red brick Depot east out to the East Inkom Hold every hour on the hour for two straight days. We rode one of these trips. These cars would later be used on the trips down in Utah. Amtrak passed out information and gave out thousands of paper engineer caps which I helped folded. I never wanted to see another one of those caps to fold as long as I live {Just kidding!}. The Challenger then pulling a short passenger train went east to McCammon, turned on the wye before returning to Inkom to pick up the Governor of Idaho prior to steaming back into town. I photographed this whole event.

The next day, we followed the Challenger and short train all the way down to outside of Salt Lake City. We shot pictures of it in Idaho prior to racing to Ogden to pick up Bill off of the Desert Wind before we back tracked to Brigham City to resume the chase and picture taking. We returned to Pocatello with Bill making his only visit there with me. Over the next few days Bill and I went to Boise and down to Salt Lake City to shot picture of the Rio Grande Zephyr, the last non Amtrak train operating in the United States outside of Alaska. Someday I am going to ride that train. We spent two more days relaxing before Bill, Bruce and I drove down to Salt Lake City to take the Union Pacific's excursion train.

We boarded a coach for the trip down the freight only line to Provo which started out with street running down one of Salt Lake City's streets for a few miles. Everyone was out taking pictures and waving at the train as this was a major media event. The train steamed out into the industrial areas before it reached the community of Sandy with it's housing developments and rural atmosphere. The train then climbed the grade up to Point of the Mountain where we did our first photo runby of the day. The coal burning Challenger was setting track side fires from it's exhaust as we travelled south and looking back towards Sandy you can see smoke rising from where we had been. We descended into the Provo Valley prior to running along US Steel's plant at Geneva before we arrived at Provo for a box lunch and so that the engine could be watered, serviced and the train turned on the wye there. On the way back to Salt Lake City, the Challenger continued to cause track side fires. The engine didn't do this up in Idaho because the southeast area of that state had above normal rainfall before it's visit there while Utah had remained bone dry. As the train returned north it seemed to be setting them at will. When we did our last photo runby on the southside of Point of the Mountain it started fires right in front of us. As the engine backed to start the runby, the wind was blowing a grass fire right towards one end of the photo line where the non train riding photographers were in danger as the fire chased them to other instant photo locations. We did the runby and reboarded the train quickly. The fire continued to burn as we left. As we rounded Point of the Mountain back into the Salt lake Valley, I looked back to Point of the Mountain and saw a high bellowing cloud of smoke ascending into the sky. We all thought that the Challenger had set Point of the Mountain on fire. The UP 3985 had left it's mark on Utah. We returned to the Union Pacific Salt Lake City Station finishing an interesting and wonderful first trip with the Union Pacific's Steam Crew. Bruce drove Bill and I back up to Ogden where later that evening we caught the Desert Wind for a very uneventful trip home.

Note: A few years later, the Union Pacific's Steam Crew converted the Challenger from being a coal burner to an oil burner which allowed it to be run almost anyplace on their system which ended most of the track side fire problems.

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