Some of our best memories of growing up was taking the passenger train from Fort Wayne, Ind.to Chicago to shop for Christmas. It was something my friends and I looked forward to yearly.

Thoughts of those trips came back this past week as Big Boy No. 4014 rolled through Kansas on the main line of the Union Pacific. The route took the giant steam engine through Ellsworth County on a chilly Thursday morning. Hundreds gathered here and at other stops to get photographs of the historic train.

(The above photo was taken at Hays by Ellsworth’s Anna Hand, a student at Fort Hays State University.)

I wasn’t the only one who took a trip to the past when the train arrived here. Local businessman Larry Pacey visited the I-R office later in the day Thursday and shared the story of his father. The Pacey family moved here in 1948 because of his father’s job — pumping water for the steam engines. Two years later, the elder Pacey started a dirt moving service, a business Larry Pacey continues today. Larry’s father also was a charter member of the organization known today as the Kansas Land Improvement Contractors.