A young boy stood beside the Union Pacific 833 steam locomotive’s 6-foot-diameter drive wheels as his family took a photo. Built in 1939, the Northern-type locomotive sacrificed some pulling power for speed. Those giant wheels once carried passenger trains between Ogden and Cheyenne at speeds topping 90 mph.
Old steam locomotives are having a moment, aren’t they? Museum docent Byron told me that over 25,000 showed up on an Ogden weekend in May to pay homage to Big Boy as the Union Pacific 4014 passed through town on its transcontinental journey.
Ogden’s Union Station traces its lineage to 1869, the year the Golden Spike was driven at nearby Promontory. A magnificent wooden depot crowned with a clock tower opened in 1889, becoming the centerpiece of the booming railroad town. After it was destroyed by fire in 1923, today’s station rose in its place the following year. Now at the foot of Historic 25th Street, Union Station serves FrontRunner commuters and visitors exploring its six museums.
Beneath the station, hidden from visitors, are remnants of the 1889 depot, including old bank vaults that survived the 1923 fire. Old-timers speak of ticket agent Frank Yentzer, killed when a loose brick fell from the station’s clock tower before the fire. Some still claim to hear unexplained footsteps or catch the scent of lilacs drifting through empty hallways. Whether fact or folklore, every great railroad station seems to collect stories that refuse to leave.
So why do those towering wheels and that pitch-black boiler make grown men stop and stare? Perhaps it’s because they remind us of a time when machines weren’t hidden beneath plastic covers and computer chips. Steam locomotives wore their strength on the outside. Every piston, rod and valve had a purpose you could see. They breathed, hissed and thundered with a kind of honest power that made technology feel almost human.
Stepping back outside, I watched four modern Union Pacific locomotives work in perfect unison as they eased a long freight through the Ogden yard. Nearly 160 years after the first transcontinental railroad united East and West, Ogden remains one of America’s great railroad crossroads.
A display on the so-called Lucin Cutoff caught my eye. Opened in 1904, 35 years after the Promontory golden spike, the cutoff was formed by giant wooden piers set into the Great Salt Lake, eliminating 44 miles of grueling grades and twisting curves through Promontory. The new route from Ogden to the west transformed rail service. I remember well when the old wooden piers were salvaged in the early ’90s, replaced decades earlier by a safer earthen grade.
Suddenly one photograph stopped me.
It was a familiar scene, but oh so many years ago. It was a construction photo from around 1869 of old Union Pacific steam engine 120 going through Weber Canyon Tunnel No. 3, now one of the most photographed tunnels in the West at the Taggart rapids on the Weber, east of Morgan.
Wandering farther through the museum, my eyes settled on photographs of Ogden’s gathering places — Brown’s, Farr’s and Jack’s Ice Cream; Harman Cafe (yes, the KFC pioneering family), Union Grill, La Ferrovia and the Territory. They weren’t simply restaurants. They were places where families celebrated birthdays, railroaders grabbed a late meal after a shift, and neighbors caught up over pie and coffee.
For Ogdenites, the photographs bring back memories. For others, they are reminders of the social impact of familiar gathering places. The history of Ogden’s rough-and-tumble 25th Street, still today filled with over a dozen restaurants and just about as many bars, still radiates outward from Union Station and remains the community’s social hub.
So what is it that draws us to trains?
Why do songs like City of New Orleans, Wabash Cannonball and Orange Blossom Special still stir something deep inside us?
Perhaps it’s the rhythm of the rails. Perhaps it’s the promise that every whistle carried — that somewhere beyond the next bend lay opportunity, adventure or home. Trains have always represented movement, but they also represent memory. They remind us of the pioneers who stitched a continent together with iron rails, of families reunited on station platforms, of soldiers returning home, and of children who stood wide-eyed beside wheels taller than they were.
Maybe that’s why we still stop and stare. The locomotives may belong to another century, but what they symbolize — hope, possibility, and even the journey itself — never goes out of style.
DETAILS
Getting There: It’s an easy hour and change from Park City to Ogden’s Union Station, at the foot of 25th Street.
What’s There: Union Station features a collection of six museums, from trains to art to Browning firearms. One admission covers it all.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Small family-friendly fee.