FOSTORIA — When the Union Pacific Big Boy steam locomotive leaves Fort Wayne, Ind., on Saturday morning, throngs of spectators already will have begun gathering along the steel ribbon its train will follow across northwest Ohio to Bellevue.
In places like Payne and Latty and Oakwood; in Miller City, Leipsic, and Green Springs; and in the wide open spaces in between, they will gather on roadsides and at grade crossings to watch the largest steam locomotive in the world thunder by, its low-pitched, throaty whistle signaling for crossings above the rhythm of its pistons, the bark of its smokestack, and the blur of its driving rods.
Their total numbers may not exceed the massive crowds that migrated to the area 26 months before to see a total solar eclipse. But the sky watchers had a much greater range from which they could witness the celestial spectacle, whereas Norfolk Southern’s slender right-of-way slicing across Paulding, Putnam, Hancock, Seneca, and Sandusky counties will be the only place that day to see this surviving example of a pinnacle of human technological achievement…