More Than a Machine: Big Boy No. 4014 Sparks a Nationwide Reunion – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

More Than a Machine: Big Boy No. 4014 Sparks a Nationwide Reunion – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

ALTOONA, Pennsylvania — In Virginia Lee Burton’s classic 1939 children’s book Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Mulligan often boasted that his steam shovel, Mary Anne, “could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week, but he had never been quite sure that this was true.” By the end of the story, Mulligan never gets the chance to prove his boast because electric, diesel, and gasoline shovels have taken away nearly all of Mary A…