The last leg of the cross country trip for UP 4014 was on July 3, from Abrams yard in King of Prussia to the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. I scouted a bunch of possible locations and chose The Laurel Hill East cemetery in East Falls as my location. There was wild speculation that they would turn the train at East Falls Junction and back the train through Philadelphia.

I arrived at just after 7 am in the morning, when they open to the public. There was a crew chaining the gate. At first I thought they were closing and quickly looked for another location. But returned and parked on the street. Since I was going to have to walk in, the big camera needed to stay on the car.

There was a small crowd compared to the previous day’s crowds, but it kept growing as we got closer to the time for the UP 4014 to arrive. We all thought it was going to come out onto the stone bridge and then back onto the Steel bridge. There was a NS Light engine move which gave an indication of the light we were going to have.

As the UP 4014 started to move into the junction, you could see that it was on the track headed into towards the city not towards the bridge. The crowd panicked, what if we all were wrong and it wasn’t going to back into Philadelphia or what if it was going to turn at a different junction? Easily a third to half of the crowd gathered at the cemetery and on Kelly Drive scattered, thinking we guessed wrong.

I honestly thought this was all I was going to see of the locomotive that day. I wasn’t that worried because I had done well in my first couple of times seeing it. I was just disappointed, I thought this was a cool location and a recognizable Philadelphia scene. I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to get to a different location and it not be three or four people deep.

I stayed just in case it was still going to turn on the wye at East Falls, but the train had to enter the wye from a different direction. It did.

If they had entered the wye from the direction we originally thought, it would have been nice light on the front of the locomotive. It turned out that we still had great light on the scene.

My only regret that day I had just after the train passed, was leaving the 4×10 camera in the car. The walk back to the car in 100+ degree heat made me not regret that decision.

I was able to see the UP 4014 Big Boy as it made its way from Jim Thorpe to King of Prussia, Pa today. I wasn’t sure if the combination of the crowds and the heat were going to be too much, but I’m glad I went to see it in action.

The nice part of the run from Jim Thorpe to Reading was that the Reading Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad was running an excursion on the line which proceeded the Big Boy by a few minutes in each location. They had two diesels pulling their excursion painted in their Semi Quincentennial paint schemes. This turned into a nice warning bell that the Big Boy was about to arrive.

Yes, the crowds were crazy, not your “normal” railfans either. These were regular people for the most part. They often got too close to the rails for a good image of the locomotive, but they wanted to be there and enjoy it just the same.

The other thing to deal with was the heat. There was a police officer near me while I was downtown. I overheard that a couple of people were having heat related issues just before the Big Boy arrived.

The UP 4014 in Tamaqua, PA pulled into the station and stopped for about fifteen minutes. I was able to move into the crowd to get a shot of it in front of the station.

I set up to and made the following image as it crossed West Broad Street in Tamaqua.

After a warm walk back to my car, I headed to my next location. I set up at Molino.

Between the two trains. I repositioned to the shade-side of the tracks to include the small station on the left.

Next. I headed to Leesport, Pa but I wasn’t able to park close enough to walk in the heat. SO I moved on to the next location. This viaduct is on the West side of Reading.

I was headed home at this point. I was happy with what I saw over the day. Then I was coming down 422 into Stowe and realized I was ahead of the train again. So I stopped and photographed it.

Throughout the day, two things amazed me. The crowds that were coming out at every location and the heat. I walked into each location with a bottle of water in hand and my cooler was a very welcome sight every time I returned to the car.