I recently heard that DM&IR consdered returning some Yellowstones to service in the 70's due to the issues with oil prices/unavailaility.

Was this true? Was it a serious consideration or somebody's attempt to show that they could "think outside the box" in a brainstorming session.

I don't think the Yellowstones could have made much of a dent in Missabe's bottom line by the early 1970's, because there were only three left.

I doubt that by the 1970's the Missabe Road had the infrastructure necessary to support using massive steam power. Most roads quit maintaining their water tanks, standpipes, and coaling towers as soon as the last fires were dropped, and you're talknig about a hiatus of a decade. That's not to say that some numbers were not run. I was told by a Vice President of The Family Lines in the early 1980's that if interest rates dropped below 10 percent and oil stayed high, catenary would be erected on the L&N lines from the coal fields to Cincinnati and Atlanta. Interest rates dropped, but so did the price of Diesel fuel.

Rumors being what they were, I was told a few years ago that rebuilding one was indeed kicked around, for the purposes of setting an all time record for tonnage hauled behind a single locomotive. They did routinely handled 18,000 ton trains, so perhaps these two rumors were hatched from the same source.