He is Guilty of making things happen that his Betters had told him were impossible. Now, he's trying again.

All his successful "projects" involved well-heeled sponsors willing to underwrite his fantasies--from General Motors to the Chessie System (three times!) to Babcock-Wilcox to NJ Transit. But the railfans only pay attention to the guy in the polka-dotted hat in the engineer's seat, not the railfan-card-carrying corporate VP that made it happen.

Which is precisely why I said "get back to me when the sponsors are announced".

Wow, you make it sound like Pepsi, GM and the others formed the Freedom Train and Ross accidently walked into the meeting by accident while on his way to the restroom or something.
The money came from them, of course, but it's impossible to say there'd have been a AFT anyway without Ross.

Seems to me that we are ignoring the changes that have happened among the Class 1's and their attitude about steam. I suspect that raising the monetary support for this kind of thing will be the easy part. Getting the railroads to go along....good luck.

Now, that is a legit concern right out the gate, one I I immediately thought of when the first buzz came out of Portland. That said, I'm sure Ross must be aware of the RR industry being nothing like it was in the 70s.

It would be great if he or others could pull this off. But so much has changed in 40 years in the corporate world. The folks running these companies today can get more bang for their advertising buck with an ad online or in the Big Game. I can't see Google or Facebook or even Coca Cola using their money to back technology from a century ago.

As others have said the execs at the railroads today have also changed drastically from people that worked their way up the ranks and grew up with steam to lawyers and bean counters that have never been in a locomotive.

If I recall correctly the 614 trips on NJT did not end well financially.

The Greenbriar Express also did not end well financially after running into regulatory roadblocks.

If you read the recent article in Trains about the Flying Scotsman that also did not end well financially.

However some exceptions exist as with NS's recent warming to allow steam excursions on their lines and UP starting work on the Big Boy.

So there is hope. But financing is key and needs a lot of work.

Emmy, Tony, Oscar and now the Ninny (Nattering Nabobs of Negativism).

Incidentally, it turns out that the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism" originated with William Safire, speech-writing for Spiro Agnew:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/atty ... -2009.html

Dead horses would not have to be beaten, if the owner would stop raising false hopes that a miraculous resurrection was on the horizon.

And, if you've been keeping score over the past 20 years, it is at least "NNN's" 3, Ross Rowland 0. How many times does he have to get shut out, before one accepts the fact that the NNN's were right all along?

But, I digress ... denial is always a tough thing for folks to overcome. :-)