Altoona gets massive tourism boost from Big Boy visit
State College routinely draws 100,000 people several times a year to watch big boys play football for Penn State. Between Wednesday and Saturday last week, Altoona drew about 100,000 people to watch a single Big Boy — the world’s largest operating steam engine — pull into town, pose at Norfolk Southern’s Rose Yard for two days, then travel to the Horseshoe Curve, where it posed again for half an hour before heading west on the NS mainline. The event’s unspooling was smooth as the rails on which the behemoth rolls and the area’s management of the Big Boy visit elicited ...
