I can assure anyone interested that Dave Kloke will be all to happy to build whatever you'd like as long as you're paying the bills. Remember these engines are hand built with by a very small group of people. He builds to order and having a set of plans and patterns already made helps keep the cost down. For example the boiler design had to be redone to the current FRA standard, which is not the same as when the Park Service had their two built.

We've discussed developing some type of plan that would allow Dave to build several types of engines to using interchangable parts. The biggest hurdle is it would take development money, something in short supply in this economy.

Remember Dave's also building a coach and afterward hopefully a copy of the Lincoln Funeral car. Leviathan should be operating in Rock Island this July. http://www.trainfestival2011.com/

Come to think of it, hasn't Leviathan been parked since late 2009?

How is this engine not going to be worth preserving? Have you seen, heard, or ridden behind it? It will also be in far better shape than any "original" in another 50 or 100 years, and 99.999% of the general populous won't know or care about the difference.

Steam is steam. Love it.

Chris

Quite the judgement based on looking at some photos on a website.

Both the Leviathan and the York (both now happily living in Pennsylvania) are amazing locomotives that are fun to see operate and ride behind. I made a special trip to IRM years ago so I could ride behind the Leviathan (I had seen it at the train festivals but I wanted to really ride behind her!). And I've been to Steam into History to Ride and Chase the York.

Loco112 is correct. Think about how much money would be saved if railroad collections could be reduced to a thumb drive containing all the drawings of locomotives out there. We wouldn't need locomotives, rolling stock and tracks. Railroad museums could be reduced to little booths where we hand out the thumb drives and make excuses why we don’t have a real artifact. We just don’t need the real thing.

I suspect that within 20 years your museum will be handing out VR goggles to "tour" a virtual collection and / or seating visitors at a hardware control stand where they can operate the train of their choice.

Take a look at the graphics quality in this video. On my desktop, which admittedly has a rather high-end graphics card, I can play this game in 4K and it looks quite real. In another decade or so, it will be hard to tell it's virtual reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OakLmUVc58Y

At some point you're going to have a locomotive on display, and a banks of PCs where visitors can explore what it was like back in the day by going on a virtual excursion or running the locomotive itself. Will it replace the real thing? I certainly hope not, but computers are a lot cheaper to maintain.

Does anyone have a good comparison of the "prototype" and these locos? What are the major differences? What compromises were made? Are they really that inaccurate? Or do they simply look like park trains due to the shiny paint and generally clean appearance?

That clean appearance was common in the 1860's, crews had "their" engine, and they were proud of it. Many engines in tourist operations are kept very clean, to give an appealing view to the riders, I know I take pride in keeping my engine clean and wiped down as much as possible when I'm on engine crew.

This happened at the Fillmore and Western Railway. We had a super little Porter wood burning engine that was built in 1898. I ran it once for our Railfest and loved it.
The pop off pressure was set at 100 pounds, and the engine ran fine. Unfortunately, FRA came in and said the boiler had to be tested to 200 pounds.
Well in an over 100 year old engine that was not going to happen, so it was sold, unfortunately.

The “look of park trains” seems like quite a generalization, but park trains do sometimes appear to be lacking. But I see none of that with the York No. 17 and the Leviathan.

I assume that those two locomotives are not replicas of specific historical locomotives, but rather they replicate a general pattern of 4-4-0s in a particular timeframe. My guess is that the time frame would be within the 1860s.

I see nothing about those two locomotives that is less than complete historical fidelity to the general pattern. They seem flawlessly executed in every detail with the highest level materials and workmanship. I believe it has been shown that they were built with some fabrication substituting for castings, but again, I don’t find any typical pattern details to be omitted or simplified for expediency or cost reduction. They look like the real deal in every way.

There are lots of photos that can be found in the Internet showing other preserved historical locomotives in built to this pattern. Here is one link that shows a Rogers locomotive typical of the era of Leviathan and York locomotives.

https://yorkblog.com/yorkspast/steam-in ... comotives/

I would also bet that both of the Kloke locomotives were built from a full set of engineering drawings and 3D CAD models.

The only park trains that I have found lacking in any way are the crown engines and even they are nice in their own way.

All other theme parks (Disneyland, disneyworld, Dollywood, knotts, cedar point) operate historic locomotives in paint schemes that appropriate for what they represent in my opinion.

The Leviathan is a replica of a Central Pacific RR locomotive that was a sister engine to the Jupiter. It was built with the same engineering drawings and patterns that were created by O’Connor Engineering to build the replica of Jupiter for the Golden Spike Historic Site.

So it's based on a specific locomotive. I'd had that impression previously. So that's why I'm trying to figure out the "park train" reference. I mean obviously there are technical differences though I don't know details. Guessing fabrication instead of casting for at least some parts, like the frame. The boiler would also be built to current standards.

However, none of that is obvious in a photo. So what is it that doesn't look "right" about these locos? Are they historically inaccurate, or are they simply different than the modern steam power we're used to. The funeral coach looks rather odd, but from what I can see, it's also historically correct, it was just a unique car.

Curious the ballpark construction costs of these two locomotives?

Probably in the $2,000,000 range by my guess.