The Beauty and The Beast

Wallpaper Description:

Two Union Pacific steam locomotives meet out West, a beautiful streamliner and the beast, a Big BoyUnion Pacific 4-8-2 #7002
and a 49er (1937 to 1941)

Forty-Niner was an all Pullman train run 5 times a month between Chicago and San Francisco in 1938-1941 to help celebrate the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco, CA -
In 1937, she received a unique streamlined "bathtub"-style casing as one of only two locomotives chosen to head the illustrious '49er' express passenger service between Chicago and San Francisco, along with UP class P-13 4-6-2 "Pacific" no. 2906.
Unfortunately, neither engine (nor any example of either class) would be saved for posterity, both having surrendered to the cutter's torch in the early-to-mid-1950's.

The Union Pacific Big Boy is a type of simple articulated 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive manufactured by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) between 1941 and 1944 and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad in revenue service until 1962.
The 25 Big Boy locomotives were built to haul freight over the Wasatch mountains between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyoming.
In the late 1940s, they were reassigned to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where they hauled freight over Sherman Hill to Laramie, Wyoming. They were the only locomotives to use a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement: four-wheel leading truck for stability entering curves, two sets of eight driving wheels and a four-wheel trailing truck to support the large firebox.
Today, eight Big Boys survive, with most on static display at museums across the country. One of them, No. 4014, was re-acquired by Union Pacific and rebuilt to operating condition from 2014 to 2019 for the 150th anniversary of the First transcontinental railroad, regaining the title as the largest and most powerful operating steam locomotive in the world.