“Good morning, America, how are you?” – from “City of New Orleans,” popularized by Arlo Guthrie
On a glorious American morning, my better half nudged me awake with a goofy grin and a plan to flip my Saturday script.
“Wake up, honey,” she purred. “There’s something I want to do today.”
Somehow, I instinctively knew she had contracted “Big Boy Fever.”
“I am not going to see that (bleeping) train,” I snarled.
An hour later, we were on our way to see that bleeping train.
So, it seemed, was everyone else in Our Stiff Neck of the Woods. Throngs of stoked locals and welcome out-of-towners flocked to witness the reunion of Union Pacific’s Big Boy 4014 and Big Boy 4012. The former is the world’s largest operating steam locomotive; the latter is a prized relic at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton.
Big Boy 4014 is on a coast-to-coast tour to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. The itinerary includes a two-week stop at Steamtown. Officials expected as many as 50,000 guests to visit the park by June 30. When Big Boy 4014 pulled into the region last Saturday, the chugging hunk of history drew jubilant crowds along its circuitous route.
I’m not a “railfan,” but I understand the romance trains inspire in artists like Arlo Guthrie and everyday aficionados who hear poetry in pumping pistons and blaring whistles. Without trains, America as we know it would never have left the station.
Railroads expanded America, revolutionizing freedom of travel, commerce and communications. Iron rails quickly became the hardwired arteries of a dynamic, prosperous nation on the move. Technologically, railroads were the internet of their age. The industry’s benefits were obvious and undeniable. The sacrifices of the laborers who forged and laid the tracks could be defended as necessary to connect the country and push it into a future of unlimited innovation.
Railroads transformed the nation and bettered the lives of humans around the world. Promoters of the “AI Revolution” promise similar wonders but have produced no credible evidence suggesting their desired version of America and the wider world will benefit anyone but billionaires and other elites.
Compare the advent and impacts of railroads with today’s data center invasion and the sacrifices obviously and undeniably outweigh the alleged benefits. The “AI Revolution” is an existential threat to freedom of travel, commerce, communications, privacy and personal security.
The negative environmental, economic and health impacts of data centers have rightly been the immediate focus of the global resistance, but at least as important as where they’re being built is why they’re being built.
For the umpteenth time, hyperscale data centers are not necessary to power the internet or host your Facebook, TikTok and Instagram accounts. They are necessary to collect, capitalize and weaponize every detail of every human life. They are the framework of a surveillance state that can instantly freeze your assets, steal your property and cut off your access to food, water and shelter. Take a look at the Bond film villains engineering this runaway scam and ask yourself if you want them running the world.
The data center invasion has rightly dominated my working life since last year. When I’m not writing about it, I’m attending public hearings and consuming all the information I can to keep up to speed with an entirely speculative industry that shape-shifts daily. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that Our Constitutional Republic is being stolen one small town at a time.
Over more than 30 years in local journalism, I’ve never covered a crisis that compares. The threat has united everyday Democrats, Republicans and independents in a righteous, determined resistance our elected officials can no longer afford to ignore. Incumbents running against weak opponents may enjoy some short-term cover, but in the long run, support of or silence on the invasion will catch up with them.
For anyone paying close attention, the data center invasion worms its way into every experience, including standing by railroad tracks with hundreds of fellow Americans gathered for a glimpse of a bleeping train.
We caught up with Big Boy in Duryea on Saturday and again in Old Forge on Sunday.
Both times, the legendary locomotive was pushing rather than pulling, an ironclad reminder that the route to our desired destination sometimes requires brief retreats to gather steam.
I’m glad my better half caught “Big Boy Fever” and gave it to me. The result was a glorious American afternoon spent among friendly strangers who heard a distant whistle and grinned because a chugging hunk of historic technology we can trust was just around the bend.
CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, salutes the dedicated human employees and volunteers who keep Steamtown chugging along. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.