Some football teams enter their stadiums with a blast of a cannon, others to a smoke wall. The Boilermakers enter to the sight and sound of the Boilermaker Special train and the Purdue Reamer Club members who drive it.
The Boilermaker Special V, the current incarnation of Purdue's official mascot, is a common sight on Saturdays during football season. Boilermaker fans can also see its little brother, the X-Tra Special VI, which actually leads the Purdue football team onto the field.
Preparation for Saturday's game against No. 16 Oregon begins on Friday afternoon as the Special is rolled out to give free rides around campus. Brant Bowen, a senior in the School of Industrial Engineering, is one of only four drivers, called pilots, of the Boilermaker Special.
"After (Friday), we kick it into gameday preparation," Bowen said. "A group of us goes over and we wash the train. We clean the brass, all of the rails. I would typically give an hour for washing and half-an-hour for (brass cleaning)."
Around 9 a.m. on Saturday, the 10-person crew (eight for the Special, two for the X-Tra Special) begin what they call wake-ups. The crews blast the train's horn outside of the dorms in an effort to get students up and ready for the game.
After waking up the student body, the Specials act as escorts for the All-American Marching Band as they make their way to Slayter Hill and Ross-Ade Stadium beyond. As kickoff approaches, the two-person crew of the X-Tra Special prepare to signal the Boilermakers taking the field.
"It's hard to describe watching everyone run through you and be out on the middle of Ross-Ade where 62,000 people are watching you," Matt Steiner, a senior in the School of Civil Engineering and co-pilot of the X-Tra Special, said. "It's a really fun experience. I'm glad I did it."
While the Special rolls around campus much like a normal car or truck, driving the behemoth actually takes up to a year of training. There are difficulties involved in learning how to drive the Special when you can't see anything on your right for 30 feet due to the smoke stack, Bowen said.
"It's a hard vehicle to drive," he said. "You have to rely on the co-pilot to see for you."
As for why Bowen would go through the 10 months of training it took to learn to pilot the Special, he said it went back all the way to Boiler Gold Rush his freshman year.
"I just fell in love, I thought it was really cool," Bowen said of seeing the Special for the first time. "Especially when I found out it was the official mascot of the University. When you think mascot, you think a guy dressed in a suit, so I thought that was really cool."
