My apologies. I have corrected my previous post. Last time I checked Vermont was capitalized as well, but let us not get pendantic here.

If that is all you got out of the post, then I doubt there is anything you can learn from this forum and its members. There is a wealth of information and experience available on this forum, much of it from people who have "been there, done that". You seem to ignore this advice, and simply think that writing a letter will yield an F40PH with no members, no volunteers, no money, and no agreement to store/display it.

Write your letter, take our advice, or don't. Either way, I wish you luck.

Look at all this naysaying!
Good grief, if we relied on y'all as experts on what is possible, nothing would ever be done.

It's not naysaying, it's constructive criticism. You, of all people know the value of doing all of your "homework" and thinking about each and every possible outcome, and preparing how to reach to each potential situation. Robert, you do your research, learn about the subject, and then act. Why shouldn't we apply your thought process to this issue? You are the only person I know who used the "ruler" on Google Earth to measure every railroad museum's carbarn. RCD can learn from your meticulous nature.

Sure, anyone can write a letter to MBTA and say "Can you donate us an F40PH, pleeeasssszzzzeee!" It's quite another approach to go to them, with a letter, meet with those in a decision making capacity, have a business plan, donations, storage agreement, and the whole nine yards in order and ready, so you can present them with a realistic and workable plan.

What type of request would you be more receptive to, if you were in charge at MBTA?

Absolutely.

And the reason we "old heads" are reacting "cynically" to this is that many of us have either seen, firsthand, the overzealous but fantastical enthusiasm of dreaming railfans blissfully and cluelessly unaware of the financial, mechanical, legal, or logistical realities of the "real world," or, worse yet, suffered the ramifications wrought by such zealotry.

You know why a serious, well-grounded inquiry about wanting to negotiate the preservation of a particular piece of rolling stock doesn't get taken seriously when it reaches the executive offices? Because it never gets there in the first place, getting lost in the "circular file" along with "Letters From Nuts" demanding that they donate one of every locomotive model to a museum, they they offer excursions out of the letter writer's home town (on FRA excepted track), that they fix up and lease the abandoned stations in Podunk/Pawnee/Pennyville, that they fence off the whole right of way through a town so the little kiddies don't get hit by trains, etc.

There's a reason railroad employees are often quite reluctant to admit that they are honest-to-goodness rail enthusiasts: the "bad apples" that spoil the basket for the rest of us.

A few hours ago, I just got the tentative OK for a rail-related, ummm, let's just call it a "mission" for now.... that I was specifically told NOT to send in as a formal request through "official" channels, because it would be instantly rejected. I actually had to stop two others from trying to do the same thing through formal channels on behalf of the group lest they "screw this up." Instead, it's happening via other channels, but officially and with appropriate approval. (And to be brazenly honest, the negotiations happened over craft beers off-hours over the course of many months and patient waiting for the right pieces to fall into place. And no, it doesn't involve a GG1, or the Stewartstown Railroad.)