The lyrics for the Nebraska 66's newest song, The Living Legend, which is a song about the Union Pacific FEF-3 Class 4-8-4 #844.
The Union Pacific 844 was built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady New York on Christmas Eve of 1944. She was one of 45 FEF-3 Class 4-8-4 Northern Type locomotive built for the Union Pacific between 1937 and 1944 as the last steam locomotives built for the company. She and the rest of her class were built for pulling passenger and freight trains across the Union Pacific's system. They worked alongside the Union Pacific 4-6-4 Challengers and the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boys. Unfortunately, when the diesels started taking over the passenger runs, the 844 was sent to be reassigned to carry out the freight work until the diesels took that over as well. And then, every one of them were retired between 1958 and 1959, 838 of the FEF series locomotives were preserved. All were retired but 844 was never retired, in fact, it's the only steam locomotive that's never been retired by a Class 1 North American Railroad. Essentially, the 844 has always been working, it's just not doing it as much as it used to.
The Living Legend truly lives by its name to this day. Hopefully this year, we'll get to see this old timer run again. The reason for that is because it's being overshadowed by the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy #4014. But I'm hoping that sometime later this year, the Living Legend will be back on the rails again.
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/s1Q4bE_84aE/maxresdefault.jpg)