I almost hate to bring this up, but as I read this story I became a bit concerned at how cavalier the multimillion price tags were being tossed out there, on a railroad that has art sales every year to raise a little more capital.
I could find nothing on the Museum Web site anywhere about either the Phoenix projects program, or any heavy work on the two locomotives. The collection of newsletters has not been updated past the middle of 2014, in advance of the promo stories. Although they hired a guest-care person on a 40 hour per week basis, there is 'no help wanted' on the volunteer steam shop's page. On the assumption that they'd gone to Facebook instead of the Web, I looked back through their posts to the beginning of 2014 -- not a peep about this. Although they did provide this perhaps telling item:
Wonder if their free annual training program involves enough aspects of crane safety? (Hopefully it's just a parallax thing in the photo, but it made my blood run cold...)
I regretfully conclude this is a Kyle "30 years in publicity" Bassett press release, perhaps being executed in a superblack steam skunkworks in Pottstown somewhere. But boy! would I love to find out I'm mistaken!