SILVIS, Ill. — Three of the largest and rarest locomotives arrived in Silvis on Saturday afternoon. This comes after Railroading Heritage of Midwestern America accepted a donation from Union Pacific in an effort to restore them back to their original working conditions.
The Challenger Union Pacific 3985, Centennial Union Pacific 6936 and Union Pacific 5511 are the locomotives that are being donated to RRHMA.
"It will be several millions of dollars to restore these pieces of equipment back to their original operating condition," said Steve Sandberg, president and chief operating officer of RRHMA.
The train traveled from Wyoming, going 900 miles in a span of nine days. Ed Dickens, Union Pacific's equipment manager, said that the journey wouldn't have been possible without the team he had.
"All the work that we did to prepare the locomotive, all the planning, details redundancies and the backups on top of our backups. All this so that we can move the locomotive without failure without risk of having some problem that could potentially jeopardize a moment like this," said Dickens.
The locomotives will be restored at RRHMA's newest facility in Silvis. A ticketed event will be hosted Sunday, allowing people to take a tour of the locomotives.
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