(The Associated Press circulated the following on April 22, 2009.)
ROSEVILLE, Calif. — Choo choo, tweet tweet!
That’s the sound of a historic train trip being tracked on Twitter.
Steam Locomotive No. 844, which was Union Pacific Railroad’s last steam locomotive, is on a 32-day four-state tour from Roseville, Calif., to Ogden, Utah. Dispatches about the journey are being posted to Twitter.
The tour started April 11 and continues through May 12, when it arrives in Utah to help mark the 140th anniversary of the driving of the Golden Spike. The Golden Spike was driven on May 10, 1869, in Utah to connect the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines in the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.
Visitors to http://www.up.com can access route maps and track the historic steam engine’s location by GPS. The GPS from the train will also “tweet” the location of the locomotive on Twitter. Check out the updates at http://twitter.com/UP-Steam or click on the map to see where the train is.
No. 844 was delivered to Union Pacific in 1944. A high-speed passenger engine, it pulled widely known trains like the Overland Limited, Los Angeles Limited, Portland Rose and Challenger. When diesels took over all of the passenger train duties, No. 844 was placed into freight service in Nebraska between 1957 and 1959. It was saved from being scrapped in 1960 and is now used for special events and excursion runs.