Big Boy No. 4014 was coming through Mifflin County.

For most people, that meant a rare chance to stand near the tracks and watch one of the world’s most famous steam locomotives move through the county.

For Erwin, it meant her father.

“When my dad was alive, he loved trains,” Erwin said.

So she booked the trip. Her husband found her a ticket from Kansas, where she now lives, and helped her get home. She wasn’t coming because a train was passing through. She was coming because this train was passing through a place that still holds her childhood memories.

Erwin grew up in Granville. Her father, Harry Watt, grew up there too. Trains ran through town then, as they still do now, and Watt liked to be where he could see them. When the family came back to Mifflin County after moving away, he often went to the Lewistown train station and sat on a bench with his brother.

They watched the trains come in and go out. They needed little else.

“He would just love to go and sit and watch the trains go by,” Erwin said.

On Wednesday, another train will come through.

Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 is scheduled to make a whistle-stop today, near the Roundhouse Road crossing in Granville Township as part of its America250 tour. The locomotive is expected to arrive at 12:45 p.m. and depart at 1:15 p.m., giving residents and visitors about 30 minutes to see one of the most famous steam locomotives ever built.

But local officials are stressing one important point. Big Boy will not stop at the Lewistown train station.

The station is closed to the public because of ongoing construction. Only people with valid Amtrak tickets will be allowed in the immediate station area, according to the Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau. The designated viewing area is about 1.5 miles beyond the station, near the Roundhouse Road crossing.

To help move people safely, the visitors bureau will offer free shuttle service from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Shuttles will leave from the Lewistown Borough parking lot next to Heller-Hoenstine Funeral Home, 200 N. Main St., and run continuously to and from the Roundhouse Road crossing viewing area. The visitors bureau will also have an information tent at the parking location.

Jenny Landis, executive director of the visitors bureau, said the stop is expected to draw thousands because it is the only whistle-stop between Lebanon and Altoona. With closures and limited access expected near the viewing area, she said the shuttle eases congestion and helps keep visitors safe.

The public-service message is clear: use the shuttle, stay off the tracks and expect delays.

The larger story is older.

Big Boy No. 4014 was built for a different America. Union Pacific commissioned 25 Big Boy locomotives, with the first delivered in 1941. They were built to haul heavy freight over steep grades, especially between Ogden, Utah, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. They were working machines, designed to move weight through the West.

The numbers still sound almost unreasonable.

Big Boy locomotives are more than 132 feet long and weigh more than 1.2 million pounds. Their 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement means four pilot wheels in front, two sets of eight driving wheels, and four trailing wheels. Their frames are articulated or hinged, so the giant engines can handle curves.

No. 4014 is the largest operating steam locomotive in the world, according to Union Pacific. Of the eight Big Boys still in existence, it is the only one still running. It retired in December 1961 after traveling 1,031,205 miles. Union Pacific reacquired it in 2013 from the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona, California, and returned it to service in May 2019 after a multiyear restoration.

Now it travels the country, bringing a working piece of rail history back to places that still know the sound.

Granville Township Police expect heavy traffic before and after the stop. Helen Street will be closed during the event. Roundhouse Road will be closed to through traffic from the railroad crossing near Baldwin Drive to state Route 103 North, with access limited to local traffic. Visitors should use the northern entrance of Roundhouse Road near the MCIDC Plaza.

Parking and viewing will be allowed only in designated areas along Roundhouse Road. Officials are asking visitors not to block roads, driveways or access points and to stay off private property.

Viewers should remain at least 25 feet from the tracks. Officials also ask people to obey police and posted signs, keep children close and stay alert for other trains and rail equipment. Emergency vehicle access routes must remain clear.

Chief Chad Brehman said visitors are welcome, but safety has to come first.

A locomotive like Big Boy can make people forget ordinary rules. Its size pulls the eye, and its whistle pulls the crowd. Its smoke belongs to another century. For rail fans, it is proof that something once thought finished still has breath in it.

For Erwin, the proof is personal.

She remembers going to kindergarten “up over the hill” from the train station. Once or twice a year, she said, the children would come down the steps to see the trains before climbing back up again. Later, after her immediate family moved to Arkansas when she was 10, they came back to Mifflin County two or three times a year to visit relatives.

Her father went back to the trains.

Erwin went with him.

“Oh yeah, it was very special,” she said.

She was the only girl among four children and the youngest for nine years. She knew she was spoiled. She said it plainly, with affection. If her father liked something, she liked it too. That included trains.

“It was just something my dad loved to do, and of course, if my daddy liked to do it, I liked to do it too,” she said.

Watt died in 2019. Erwin still has pictures of him sitting on the bench at the train station.

Then she saw Big Boy was coming through Mifflin County.

“I kind of had a mini-meltdown,” she said. “I’m a daddy’s girl.”

She knows how that may sound to someone else. A woman flying from Kansas to Pennsylvania for a 30-minute train stop might sound strange until you understand she still hears her father in the sound of an engine.

“It sounds crazy, but I can’t help it,” she said.

It doesn’t sound crazy in Mifflin County.

Not in a place where tracks still divide and connect towns, where people know the sound of a train before they see it, where railroads have always been part of the local map. Not in Granville, where a girl once followed her father to watch trains because he loved them.

When asked what her father would say if he could stand beside her and watch Big Boy come through, Erwin did not hesitate.

“He will be there,” she said.

That’s why she’s coming.

The crowd will gather on Wednesday near Roundhouse Road. The shuttles will run. The police will direct traffic. People will hold phones in the air. Children may cover their ears when the whistle blows. Adults may do the same and pretend it’s only the noise.

Then Big Boy No. 4014 will appear, more than 132 feet of black steel and memory, moving through Granville Township on its way to Altoona.

For some, it will be a photograph.

For Erwin, it will be a bench at the old station, a father beside her, and a train coming in.