Mr. Cook and the Forum,

Incorporating is relatively easy, especially if you have an attorney do it. As a non-profit, there are additional requirements that one has to also establish a non-profit tax status with the IRS and your corresponding state agency. You don't need an attorney to do this, but one can be helpful if you don't feel like doing it yourself. In theory, if you can't incorporate, you have absolutely no business dreaming to build a steam locmotive or acquring a locomotive, like an F40PH for preservation.

The problem with the aforementioned Hudson project page, the T1 page, and others is what I call "the false credibility of the internet." Anyone can buy a domain name, build or have built a fancy site, make great pronouncements and claims, but it doesn't really speak as to the actual credibility of the organization. See The Yellow Ribbon Express, http://www.yellowribbonexpress.com/.

For some reason, we as a society tend to give a false sense of credibility to anything on the internet, locomotive projects included.

David M. Wilkins
PLLC, Utah

All good points. What makes the new build projects stand out is that they received no Heritage Lottery Funding-they were all funded solely by donations from the rail enthusiast community. Those were great exercises in demonstrating the power of numbers-that if x number of contributors would give X number of pounds each month for X number of months, they would see a new locomotive of an extinct locomotive class built within so many years. That gave the projects the necessary funding and support from across a broad spectrum of the community.

Something like that is not impossible here, but it would be a challenge. I do see that there are some significant, fundamental differences between our culture and that of the United Kingdom regarding charities and funding. They do not expect government to provide as many services as we do here. Much of the work there is done by charities that receive little or no government funding at all. HM Coast Guard does not operate lifeboats to any degree-that service is provided by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (and has been since 1824). RNLI is not funded by the government and is almost entirely volunteer operated. We depend on the government funded US Coast Guard for rescues at sea.

Yet, every Brit has government provided health care at no cost, and their safety net has many fewer holes than ours - good thing given their economy isn't as broadly based as ours is......was? We gave away our manufacturing......oh, well. Everybody can just go to college and get an advance degree so they can program robots to make things instead of our just making things ourselves. Call it the National Education Subsidy Act to Prevent People From Being Actually Practically Useful.

Moving along - I proposed to our steam crew that we all could voluntarily commit to a small monthly donation - somewhere between $20 and $10 depending on each person's ability to contribute - to build a slush fund to buy hard to find items as they become available. Nobody thought the idea had any merit. How do we convince even interested and active people to take the long view?

dave