> I do know him; have known him for 20 years.
> Have had some peripheral involvment on
> various projects with him, attended meetings
> with him, etc.

> Undisputable truth: He has accomplished so
> many "impossible, never-happen"
> type things that it would take hours just to
> list them all. A master showman, master
> salesman and many other things in one,
> larger-than-life package.

> Undisputable truth #2: As noted, he pretty
> much introduced the concept of big steam to
> another generation. Who knows how many of
> today's preservationists and museum
> volunteers and even individual projects got
> their start from someone seeing one of
> Ross's engines performing?

> Undisputable truth #3: For all the good
> things, there have been some bad with
> lasting repercusions, and we have lost some
> things because of that. It's difficult to
> prove a negative, but some trips didn't
> happen because of Ross and some of his
> methods. Certain railroad officials, who
> were low-level peons back in the 1970's but
> today are CEO's and VPO's, having endured
> Ross events that went a little over the
> edge, swore they'd never allow steam.....ANY
> steam.....again if they were ever in a
> position to have say over it. And they have
> held to that vow, to our loss. There has
> been some negative fallout over the years
> that haunts us to this day in the form of
> railroads, large and small, with no-steam
> policies. Certainly Ross is not responsible
> for all of those, and I am not insinuating
> that he is. But he is primarily responsible
> for some, and it's important to keep the
> perspective in clear focus.

> Sometimes, you have to ask yourself: Which
> is more important? Doing an all-out,
> no-holds-barred trip that ties up the
> railroad, alienates and angers the officials
> of that railroad, produces spectacular
> photos and recordings and memories, but
> results in a 20-year no-steam policy? Or
> doing something perhaps a little less
> spectacular, less intrusive and less likely
> to tick off the host, thus building trust
> that opens the door (just a crack) to the
> possibility of future operations, maybe even
> culminating in a regular steam program on
> that road?

> So, in Ross, we have a great human being,
> warts and all, who has done great things,
> good and bad, and will probably do more
> great things.

> He's quite a guy.

Just my two cents-after reading about the discussion (good and bad) about Ross, I must agree that he is a remarkable guy. I'm 20 and couldn't imagine pulling-off what he did in his mid/late-20's and early-30's. Just some additional thoughts:
1) I remember in a thread here during the winter that D&H and Steamtown had a dispute that caused the 759, full of water, to be stored outside of a NY roundhouse during winter.
2) Is it common/correct practice to put a steam loco into winter/off-season storage full of fuel and water? Althought I remember a dispute with Steamtown caused them to pull it outside, and maybe the 2101 would've sufferred enough heat damage anyways to make its safe operation uncertain, it wouldn't seeem to be a good idea to me, even to just permit off-season inspection of the tender.
3) I remember reading an article about the NJT trips which during the first ever weekend of NJT trips (1997) I think the media attention it got was equal to $4 million of paid advertising (maybe the $4 million is high, but it was a sizeable sum of "free" advertising for NJT). Although running 8 or 10 trips a year might be lead to exhausting interest in the Hoboken-Port Jervis trips. Who knows though, once they restore the Lackawanna Cutoff, steam might again be departing Hoboken for a trip east on NJT rails (to Scranton, Phillipsburg)
4) To sum it up, I believe the net result of Ross' contributions to the steam movement, based on my recently gained knowledge about him here (and the tidbits I knew about him from the past), would be somewhere on the positive side.
5) I believe the 759's first fantrip following its three month restoration (I believe) in Conneaut was Conneaut to Buffalo (not North East). Living in the Buffalo area, I remember seeing this info somewhere (in a book, photo caption), unless my memory is fuzzy about this.

JBeutel611@aol.com