GRANVILLE — Jane Erwin found the kind of parking spot people hope for and rarely get.

Someone she knew let her park in a yard near the tracks. She had come from Kansas to see Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 roll through Mifflin County. After the flight, the trip home and the memories of Granville and her father, the locomotive stopped almost in front of her.

“It was just amazing,” Erwin said. “It was like it was meant to be.”

Around her, about 2,500 people packed into the viewing area near the Roundhouse Road crossing in Granville Township, according to Granville Township Police Chief Chad Brehman, whose estimate was shared by the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau. About 1,500 people rode shuttle buses organized by the bureau, while traffic backed up across the area and heat became a concern for older visitors.

For about 30 minutes on Wednesday, Mifflin County became a rail town in the old sense of the word. Families gathered near the crossing with lawn chairs, cameras and bottled water. They came from nearby streets and distant states. They waited in the heat for a locomotive built when steam still did the heavy work of America.

Then it came.

Erwin had seen pictures. She knew the engine was famous. She knew it was large, at least in the way a person knows something from a fact sheet. But knowing a thing and standing beside it are different experiences.

“The train just blew me away,” she said. “It was so big.”

Big Boy No. 4014 is the largest operating steam locomotive in the world, according to Union Pacific. It is more than 132 feet long and weighs more than 1.2 million pounds. It was built to move heavy freight over mountains and later restored to draw crowds across the country.

The size impressed Erwin. So did the timing. Her father, Harry Watt, loved trains. He grew up in Granville. After the family moved away, he often returned to Mifflin County and went to the Lewistown train station to watch trains with his brother.

Erwin had said before the visit that she felt she needed to be there for him.

After seeing Big Boy, she still felt that way.

“My dad just would have been over the moon,” she said.

Asked whether she felt her father was there with her, she said yes.

“He’s not very far from me ever, both my parents,” Erwin said. “But yeah, that bond, you know, it’s there.”

Buffie Boyer, director of communications for the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau, said the bureau arranged the shuttles because Big Boy did not stop at the Lewistown train station and access near Roundhouse Road was expected to be limited.

The goal was to reduce the number of vehicles near the crossing and bring visitors into downtown Lewistown, where they could support small businesses.

Boyer said the shuttle service helped. The 1,500 riders meant fewer cars trying to get near the tracks.

But the crowd overwhelmed the area.

“I think our community was overwhelmed with the amount of rail fans that came to see the train, and traffic definitely became an issue,” Boyer said.

Boyer said the visitors bureau spoke with people from Florida, New Hampshire, Mississippi, and Kansas. She said she also heard that visitors from Hong Kong had come to follow the train. The event reached beyond local curiosity. It drew people who chase trains the way others follow baseball parks, battlefields or concerts.

The viewing area could hold only so much. People packed in close. Route 103 crept. Buses that needed to make a short trip back into town took far longer than expected. Boyer said some shuttle riders waited after the train left because buses could not get back through traffic quickly.

Heat became another concern. The humidity rose in the afternoon, and Boyer said several older visitors struggled. FAME EMS was there to help, and the visitors bureau handed out about 500 bottles of water.

The bureau also arranged portable restrooms near the viewing area, a detail people may not think about until thousands gather without public amenities.

Boyer said the day showed what worked and what would need to improve if a similar event ever came through again. Better traffic control would be the first lesson. Another would be finding a way to include local food trucks and entrepreneurs near the viewing area.

A boy selling lemonade near Boyer sold out.

“He killed it,” she said.

Still, Boyer got to see the train herself, and even after the long day, the size stayed with her.

“You just can’t fathom how large that train is until you see it in person,” she said. “And then, hearing the train whistle, we were told it was loud, but you have no idea how loud it was until you’re standing next to it.”

Erwin did not have to fight the same traffic. Her parking spot spared her the long wait many visitors faced.

She knew she had been lucky. She also knew the trip had been worth it.

“Oh, definitely, it was worth it,” she said.

Big Boy had come through Kansas City before, but Erwin was out of the country and missed it. It is scheduled to pass near Salina, Kansas, later this month, about an hour from where she lives. She hopes to see it again, this time with her son.

But Mifflin County gave her something Kansas could not.

It gave her Granville. It gave her the tracks. It gave her a few minutes with a locomotive her father would have loved.

For many, Big Boy’s stop became a story of heat, gridlock, and a larger-than-expected crowd.

For Erwin, it was simpler.

A train stopped in front of her. Her father felt close. And for a few minutes, the steam carried memory, too.