OK, I finally couldn't resist jumping in on this one.....
Is the City of Waterville willing to let the locomotive go? That's the first item on the agenda, guys. It is owned by them, and I would be surprised if they would allow 470 to be easily given away. Yes, the City does nothing to keep 470 up, it's a potential liability to them, etc., but I suspect there is a certain amount of "ownership emotion" involved when "outsiders" show up to take their engine away.
Show up with a real plan for 470, a real detailed plan for moving, restoring (at least cosmetically), conserving (under a roof of some sort), and properly interpreting the locomotive, such plan also showing where the funding will come from, and a group might have a chance to save the poor old girl. The ducks have to be gotten in a row before the City is likely to listen to any removal scheme.
Oh, and let's not forget the "local" railroad's attitude toward historic railroading. Better plan for disassembly on site, and trucking the sections out, especially based on what shape the journals must be in.
And, I think Mr. Harper and his message is as right-on-target as anything ever posted on RyPN. Too many people talk big about "saving" this or that, but are nowhere to be seen when time comes to write a check, pick up a tool, or supply a pair of hands. If the railway preservation "movement" had half as much funding as it has hot air, we would all be very well-off indeed.
Realistically (but not cynically),
Howard Pincus
Railroad Museum of New England
(which has a few MEC items, by the way)
hpincus@mindspring.com
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