Looks to me to be part of the landscaping next to the loco!

Well there you have it....... It's going to burn wood after it's rebuild, already has a start on the supply of fuel.

Tim W.

I had a similar experience at Steamtown with an overzealous ranger. Actually, it was when the train ran to Kingsley on the CP/D&H. I had run into Bernie O'Brien, who invited me to ride in the cab up to Kingsley. On arrival there, I climbed down off the engine and was standing by the trailing truck waiting for Bernie to get off. This uniformed dude came rushing up to me and said, "You have to get away from the locomotive! It could explode at any second!" I looked at him for a second in astonishment before I replied, "If that happens, you and I won't even hear the boom!" You should have seen the look on the guy's face!

"This uniformed dude came rushing up to me and said, 'You have to get away from the locomotive! It could explode at any second!' I looked at him for a second in astonishment before I replied, 'If that happens, you and I won't even hear the boom!' You should have seen the look on the guy's face!"--G. W. Laepple

Ho, ho, ho, ho, I wish I could have seen that!

Have things improved there since then?

Back to the subject at hand, specifically on the subject of lateral motion devices--they do make a difference. I am looking at my copy of "Steam Locomotive Diagrams of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad," originally published by Alvin F. Staufer just before he came out with "C&O Power" in 1965; my own copy was republished by Leonard Buonocore. Quite a few modern locomotives on the C&O, including Greenbriars and Alleghenies,were rated for maximum curvature of 20 degrees. For comparison, the Pere Marquette MK-1 (USRA light 2-8-2, Union Pacific has some as well) was rated for only 16 degrees of curvature--and was a much smaller locomotive than the 2-8-4s, 4-8-4s, 2-6-6-6s, and 2-8-8-2s the road was so well known for.

My two cents:

There's plenty of folks who could easily afford to write a check if they wanted to restore a Big Boy, build a new (name your favorite engine), or whatever their heart's desire may be.

If one of them really wants to, they can make this happen.

I am reminded of a past UP slogan: 'We can do it.'

DPK

And we haven't seen a convincing case that any of those capable of such are thus inclined.

And even if the rich Arab sheik that has 500 exotic cars decides that he wants to add a steaming Big Boy to his "garage," the reality is that YOU STILL NEED THE RAILROAD.

Not even if Warren Buffett wants to put the "world's largest steam locomotive" on a railroad he at least vaguely in theory "owns," that still doesn't mean the Powers That Be--the railroad's engineering department, the FRA, etc.--will just walk away and let him because he's a billionaire, or the President or the Pope or whomever.

I'm reminded of a time someone walked up to a locomotive owner of my acquaintance while we were working on the locos, and essentially asked how much it would take to just start them up and run them out on the adjacent railroad for a rolling run-by. The owner said, "Well, let's see. Assume we get the railroad to top off our diesel tanks, lube oil and whatnot with one of their trucks. Call that a thousand or two dollars. Now, as soon as we pull out of this siding and onto the yard track, we're going to get hit with a $10,000 fine from the FRA. Then we turn out to not have an operable radio. Another ten grand fine. No current cab card--another ten thousand dollars. We're not FRA certified licensed engineers--we're up to forty thousand. By the time I get onto the main track, we'd be into six figures in fines. Now, I assure you, we can make this happen if you'd like to write out a nice, big certified check, but I'd rather we put that money into making these things able to do it over and over again, legally, without them confiscating everything I own, capisce?"

You simply can't compare the performance of a model to the performance of the real locomotive. While they're close, they're not true scale models. Features like steam pipes are missing. Compromises have been made to provide increased swing. The flanges are definitely not to scale, a friend who runs a hobby store calls the older Rivarrossi stuff "Pizza Cutters" due to the flange depth.

I can run 80 foot passenger cars around an 18 radius curve at about 60 scale miles per hour on my HO layout. That's roughly a 130 foot radius curve on the prototype, or for you engineering types, 45 degrees. Care to guess what happens when you hit that at 60 mph? The train would barely even acknowledge that the curve exists as it went flying off into the ditch.

In five pages of nothing, this is probably the best, most informative post of the lot.

I nominate this particular post for one of the best stories told on RYPN in 2012.

The Federal Railroad Administration will let him, as long as the project complies with all of the applicable regulations. Some of the "nay sayers" in the railroad's engineering department and elsewhere may have to be replaced by people who will actually do the necessary calculations and recommend whatever changes and restrictions might be desirable.

Read Jim Wrinn's great book about the SRR/NS steam program's early days when they tried to make a ferry move of 4501. You'll see SRR management made many of the same arguments people are making here about not running a UP 4000 (curve and wye clearances were argued even then but I don't think that's in his book).
All it takes is one person to do the math and if it's actually possible, then ask, "Why not?"

Why is it that a group of individuals that are gathered on a forum designed to support railway preservation are so against one of the biggest potential preservation projects out there?

Is it because you are all jealous that your not a part of it, do you think you can do it better, or what is it.

Why not sit back and see what happens and be happy that you might get to see one of these beasts operate in your life time. I would imagine if those naysayers would change their outlook on things, this industry would not have such difficult time achieving success.

I think you nailed it.
"Well, we can't do that, so how come they were able? What corners did they cut?" -No corners, probably, they just decided they weren't going to fail. You didn't.
"It's impossible, you can't do that for these reasons..." -well, while your citing the reasons it can't be done, please step out of the way so we can go ahead and do, it please.
I think people and groups limit themselves to the idea of what they can accomplish, and live there forever. Think of all the 'impossible' RR projects in recent memory that everyone told said group it, "couldn't be done," when they should have said, "It can't be done.... by us, anyway."
Wouldn't it be great for someone involved in the UK "Tornado" project to weigh in on this? How many times had people said, "it will never happen," in regards to them?

Well, we are definitely jumping the gun on calling this project dead before it even starts, or for that matter before we even know who the players are.

However, there are some reasons. Many of us have heard this all before. Remember the Big Boy movie that was supposed to be made? All the hype it generated, only to fizzle?

"They're going to restore a Big Boy" is a rumor that seems to re-appear every so often. Often enough that the old heads all tend to say "Yeah, right..." when it comes up again.

Personally speaking, I was present at a discussion where somebody who was in a position to make the decisions flat out stated "It will never happen" when the subject was breached. Apparently things change, and opinions do too.

The downside of all this is if there is a big deal made about this and then it doesn't happen, non railroad preservation people will remember that. Then, when you go up to them, hat in hand, and say "We're collecting fund to restore old #82" they reply "Yeah, well they were going to fix up a Big Boy and that failed, what makes me think your project will do any better?

Like it or not, we have a reputation as a group. Any time an announced project fails (see Marlboro train, Grandluxe 2.0, Ski Train 2.0) it erodes a bit of the credibility of the industry as a whole.

At the moment we have several projects that are in the limelight and face uncertain futures. The Greenbriar Express, the Biofuel high speed steamer and now the Big Boy Restoration. Hopefully they all do great and we all dine on crow! Chances are fairly good that not all of them will reach a successful completion. This does not reflect well on the industry and its reputation.

I prefer projects like the Leviathan, where it was done quietly and without fanfare for the most part, avoiding the whole "Build a steam locomotive from scratch? Are you nuts!" problem.

I had no idea we had so many experts on locomotive clearances, track profiles, and over structure of the infrastructure of the Union Pacific. Let's give this a rest and wait for more official news.