This isn't pure railroad but close enough to put here.

My friend and cohort across the US since 1992 for my feasibility studies and economic impact analysis work (and taught me both) passed last week at 85. While Gordon wasn't super well known he was a speaker at TRAIN/ARM gatherings, had been all over the country with me, and made incredible impacts on the projects we know today: V&T, West Virginia Central, Colebrookdale, and many, many more.

Gordon was also well known in the modeling world, had an incredible collection of vintage Lionel, had a feature story in Classic Toy Trains, and was also an N scaler.

But his real love was the Navy, and the USS Slater, the Destroyer Escort museum ship in Albany. If you've never seen it it's a testimony to 'bigger is not better', as the Slater is fully restored to look EXACTLY like it's ready to go out on patrol, right down to the paperwork through the ship, the bunks, everything as it should be. This is on the Slater's facebook page:

We lost another one of our dedicated volunteers this week. Gordon Lattey, 85, passed away following a long illness. Gordon and his wife, Michele Vennard, were involved with the USS SLATER project from the beginning. They played critical roles in bringing SLATER to Albany. Without them, meeting with Marty Davis in 1997, and reporting to the Mayor that this was a doable project with great potential, it is doubtful we would be in Albany today. Gordon made the arrangements for our arrival ceremony and has been a key volunteer ever since. To Gordon, we can only wish fair winds and following seas. We have the watch.
https://www.legacy.com/.../name/gordon- ... obituary...

He deserves similar credit for the projects he'd worked on for this other passion of his, excursion railroad projects and community development.

Museum ships are possibly the only thing comparable to steam locomotives in terms of regulatory loads, and if you think a 1472 is bad, try getting a destroyer escort to a drydock in NYC for hull repairs. And the 4 EMD diesels are operational, but if they powered it, it would be subject to coast guard regs... Gordon always said that while he respected steam locomotives, they at least can't sink to the bottom of the ocean like a ship can if it's not maintained.

Thanks Randy. I've followed the Slater for years and wondered why it didn't power itself down to dry dock since it theoretically could. Now I know!
Ned